My friend and colleague Francis Macnab died last week at 91 years of age. He supported and inspired so many people, lifted their spirits, made them smile. He sometimes talked about the power of memories, good memories, to transport us emotionally and lift us, by bringing them into the present moment, at will.
Death serves as a reminder of how fast and light life essentially is. The days can feel long and heavy, but the years flicker across our minds like home movies. At the end, not much matters except love and our memories.
Watching Harry Potter, I saw the same idea arise - that good memories can be protective, supportive, soul medicine, when Harry learned a spell to create a Patronus, a protective, guardian animal. He did it by focussing very hard, on a positive memory.
‘How do you conjure it?’
‘With an incantation, which will work only if you are concentrating, with all your might, on a single, very happy memory.’
J.K. Rowling, The Prisoner of Azkaban
What is the happiest memory you can think of, or the most supportive, that reminds you how strong you are, that life is good, or you’re good at it?
What memories might buffer you from fears, sadness or pessimism - offering you emotional protection like a Patronus, bolstering your resilience?
Pick a simple, perhaps a sensory memory, that causes you to feel hope, gratitude, strength, light-heartedness, or other qualities you’d like to summon. Then use your personal ‘magic’ by focusing in on the memory and feeling how it effects your mind and body.
Check in with what your senses were experiencing at the time. Let yourself be transported. Breathe into the feelings and sensations of the good memory.
Smile internally and let the feelings expand and radiate within and around you, uplifting, nourishing and healing every cell of your body. You can conjure your own Patronus spell, protecting and strengthening you whenever you wish.
You can summon good memories and keep them near you through your days.
There is more to us, more to our lives than we can see with our eyes, isn’t there?
Some things, you feel.
This is so perfectly true and valuable. To allow the positive memory to inhabit all of our senses.
RIP Francis Macnab. What a legend.