Memory Lane is seductive when
I get lost in ‘might-have-beens’

By David McElroy · May 26, 2018

You have gotten much thinner
You’re lookin’ like a shadow
It’s from dwelling on the might-have-beens
Living in a time-warp
To whom am I speaking? Some ghost from the past?
While you think about old glories
You’re fading real fast
— “Memory Lane,” Daniel Amos (Doppelgänger, 1983)

I’ve fallen down that rabbit hole called Memory Lane tonight. To be more honest, though, I didn’t really fall in here, as though I had no control over things. No, I jumped in with both feet — and now I can’t seem to find my way out.

It started with a woman, but that’s not really unusual, because these trips frequently start with a woman. They start with a faint memory that turns into a burning need to relive something warm and delightful.

And from there, I slide into the warmth and security of love.

Of being loved. Of losing love.

And then to the quagmire of what might have been — the bittersweet longing that’s equal parts hope and love and despair and emptiness.

I’d been thinking about a particular picture of her all day. I don’t know why, but something in me needed to see it again, like a moth drawn to the flame that might destroy him.

It was her eyes that I needed to see.

As strange as it might sound, I see everything about some people in their eyes. I don’t remember anything specific about most people’s eyes. They’re just blanks. But every now and then, there’s someone whose eyes are like the proverbial windows to the soul — and I feel as though I can get lost in that person’s heart and mind just by diving into her essence through what I see there.

I’m not even talking about beauty. Yes, I love beauty. Yes, I love beautiful eyes, too, but this is something deeper. I don’t know what it is, exactly.

I just know that when I see this particular thing, I’m seeing someone who has something I need. It’s like a life force. An energy. It’s powerful reserves of something inside of a person which is hidden.

When I experience that, I know what I’ll find inside. I see people as something like houses. The more shallow or simplistic someone is, the smaller the inner house I see. The more complicated someone is — the deeper the well goes, the more deep emotions are hidden — the bigger this metaphorical house is in that person. And when I see this particular look, I know this is a solitary soul that’s lost and wandering a huge mansion inside — one with vast rooms and creaky stairways and half-explored wings.

When I see whatever this is, I know there is a lonely heart wandering those rooms like a ghost who’s lost its way. When I see this in a woman’s eyes, I want to come walk with her — to explore the rooms she’s afraid to explore and to share what she’s afraid to see.

How many times have I really experienced this? At least twice. Maybe three times.

And so I went through my photos from the past and found the one I had in mind. Like a strong magnet, those eyes pulled me inside — but the truth is that I went willingly — and now I’m inside that metaphorical mansion agonizing over what could have been. Over what should have been.

The song which I quoted above has another line verse which says:

You take another trip down memory lane
You go down there once too often
and you’re likely to remain

And so here I am again. Stuck in my memories of love which I lost. I’m not sure what it means to say that love is lost, though.

If love is real, it doesn’t die. It might be repressed. It might be ignored because it’s not convenient. But real love doesn’t die. Its counterfeit dies quickly. I’m sure of that. But I’m also sure that the real thing doesn’t die.

If you have a huge house — in that emotional, psychological sense — it’s easy to shove it into an unused room. It’s easy — for some people, anyway — to hide it and nail the door shut. But like Poe’s telltale heart, it’s still in there behind wherever you barricaded it.

The heart beats. You even hear it sometimes. It hurts to know it’s still there. But the rhythmic beating of that heart won’t go away.

Some people would say I’m just a romantic or a dreamer. They would say what we call love is just a passing crush which fades quickly and is soon forgotten. But I know better. I know real love doesn’t die, even when it’s no longer convenient for someone.

I’m lost in this lonely and dark and unexplored mansion tonight. It’s my metaphorical map of her heart and mind and soul. I know about places in her that I don’t think she knows about. I know about places in here which I think would scare her.

More than anything, I think she’s scared of the deep and dark place where she tried to bury her love for me. But she’s good at wearing her mask — being what everyone needs to see — and feeling that buried love is her hidden shame.

And so I’m lost in here tonight, desperately wanting to find her in this place of emotional mystery and hidden love. She doesn’t know I’m here — has no way to ever know — but I’m walking all alone in my memories of her, dreadfully afraid she will never return to that scary locked room — leaving me to wander here lost and alone on my painful trips to Memory Lane.

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If you have problems with high blood pressure, I’d like to encourage you to consider making serious changes to your diet. There might be some people who don’t have any choice but to start taking prescription medications for high blood pressure, but I’d like to tell you that I have completely eliminated my issue by eliminating all sugar and almost all carbohydrates. (A couple of months ago, my blood pressure hit 185/144, which was dangerously high — considered stage 3 hypertension.) By completely changing my eating habits, I’m down 22 pounds and my blood pressure is now in the “ideal” range — without taking any medication. In addition, I sleep better and I have more energy. Getting away from the sugar-laden mess that we generally refer to as “highly processed food” has been a life-changer for me. Now my challenge is to avoid slipping back into old habits — by eating in the dangerous ways that almost everyone in our society has come to see as normal.

When I first heard about this, I thought it must be satire. When I discovered it was real, I was appalled, but I still thought it must be a one-time thing from some nutty activist. But it turns out it’s the latest bit of pandering to a bunch of far-left activists who believe that a man can become a woman if he decides to claim he’s a woman. As everybody knows, men have prostate glands. Women do not. Period. End of story. Men can get prostate cancer. Women cannot. But political activists are so eager to pretend that a man claiming to be a “trans woman” is really a woman that they are insisting that “women” be included in public health messages about the issue. This is nothing but political virtue-signaling. If you’re a man, you know which parts you have. You know that you ought to be screened. Nobody is made any safer by dragging far-left gender ideology into simple medical reality.

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The late Steve Jobs was at the center of our culture’s transition from analog to digital. He co-founded Apple Computer. He led the team that revolutionized personal computing with the first Macintosh. As CEO of Apple, he led the development of the iPhone and later the iPad. You would think the children of such a man would be surrounded by technology. But Jobs and his wife Laureen didn’t let their children use iPads. Their home had few screens of any kind. Even though Jobs spent most of his time developing and selling Macs and iPhones and iPads, he was home with his wife and children for dinner when he was in town. The family ate together at a simple wooden table in their kitchen — and there were no digital devices or focus on popular culture. Instead, he’s said to have guided his family toward deep discussions of art, philosophy and education — with no iPads to be found. If the man who guided the development of such products chose a different path for his own children, does that suggest that his digital experience taught him that children need human connection, not screens? And does it suggest the possibility that we might be better off if we made the same choice for our families?

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