Sometimes a walk down memory lane can be an invigorating experience. It might make you feel inspired to try your hand at something that you once used to do regularly, take the trip you’ve been putting off for years or call someone you haven’t spoken to in ages. It might be all sunshine and roses and rainbows.

It can also bring up emotions you didn’t realize were hastily buried so close to the surface. I unintentionally took one of those walks yesterday and was struck by how true it really is when they say hindsight is 20/20. I was recounting details, conversations, encounters, gatherings, travels and people and the overall life-setback-ness of it all. I don’t think I felt that way at the time, but — needless to say — I did after the fact.

At the end of my trip down memory lane, I was left thinking, “Wow. It’s all got to be worth something…doesn’t it?”

I’ve never really bothered to revisit everything, and now that I had, I felt a desperation to make something out of it. To mold it. To shape and change and give it structure. I’ve never not been able to make something out of a mess, and this is a mess that I’d ignored and, more or less, forgotten about.

The truth is, however, that nothing ever has to be anything. It is what it is, and it is no more. For me, though, it’s important to make it into something; to find meaning in it, to not be burdened by it, to find some good in the weight that’s been unapologetically present for far too long. No, it doesn’t have to be anything other than what it is. But if it’s made its way into my life and has been mooching off me for long enough, then it’s going to get a boot in the behind and do what I want it to do. It will be what I want it to be. Because it’s been in control for too long.

There are a number of issues that I’m working through from a change I made in my life almost eight years ago, and I don’t know what the final outcome will be. Maybe I’ll just write about it and harness the energy, channeling it into something else. Maybe I’ll simply be able to relate to someone else who makes a similar change and I can provide a shoulder to lean on. Maybe it’s meant to be nothing more than something I think about over and over and over again so that — in time — I can hurl myself over the emotional hurdles that’ve been in the way and I can finally be done with them.

Whatever the reason, memory lane is a path that I’ve had enough of for the time-being. But at the end of the day I am grateful for those experiences and their benefit I have yet to uncover. I’ve no doubt they’re like little diamonds that’ve been in the rough for years, but when it comes time to polish them, it will be a happy, happy day.