I See... Making Memories

After years of painstaking purely anecdotal research, the Mormon Third Eye's staff of seasoned professionals have released a groundbreaking study of how to make a memory. Not just any memory, but a lasting, satisfying memory that sticks with you long after the moment of making it is gone. File this away with the long list of unique and actionable “how-to” research authored by the Mormon Third Eye and provided as a public humanitarian service to the tens of loyal readers over the past 8+ years; you can find the most recent one here.

Making a memory is not as easy as you think. The biggest mistake mankind makes is assuming that we can plan for them. Many of us schedule family reunions, daddy-daughter dates, and wedding anniversary cruises designed to prime conditions for the production of something memorable, yet in most cases these events over time tend to blur gently into the continuum of our lengthy lives. MTE research reveals that it is actually the unplanned moments, the accidental actions we randomly and courageously choose to pursue that stick on the canvass of our minds.

For example, I have attended at least 2,000+ sacrament meetings during my career on earth as a divine son of my Heavenly Father and a fortunate recipient of countless inspirational, prepared spiritual messages. However, the most crisp meeting memories that successfully rise to the surface are associated with two completely unplanned, random events; that time as a frustrated father I whisked my baby daughter out of a meeting while she screamed at the top of her tiny lungs “please don't spank me! I'll be good!”, which you can read about here, and another engaging episode of classic knock-knock jokes I traded with pre-school anklebiters sitting on the bench in front of me before the opening hymn, which you can read about here.

Here's a more recent example of how memory manufacturing really works. Over the Thanksgiving holidays we were hosted by my gracious sister's family in Nashville. A highlight was to be an evening visit with them to the impressively-lit indoor Christmas Winter Wonderland at the grand Opryland Hotel. It was a wonderful, perfectly planned and seemingly memorable experience.

However, what I will remember most was the wrong turn on the way home. We drove down a detour to accidentally discover a vacant, rundown Jellystone Park campsite magically transformed into the most oddly homespun entertaining drive-through orchestrated Christmas light show in the history of the free world. It was here that we enjoyed thousands of twinkling lights pulsating to the infectious beats of undiscovered Christian rock classics such as N-O-E-L, sung to the words of the immortal party classic “Y-M-C-A.” It was here that we stood up through the minivan roof opening with outstretched arms piercing the darkness of a December night with reckless abandon joyously singing the songs of Christmas for anyone in greater Nashville to enjoy. We topped off the evening with a midnight run to a deserted and remarkably understaffed Steak-n-Shake diner decorated with mounds of unwashed dishes at almost every table, where we were served by an amazingly perky young black waitress who sincerely endured our seriously silly demeanor.

A night to remember. A completely silly, random night germinated in the fertile ground of a carefully planned family outing. Are you ready to be random?