I spotted it at a bookshop a couple months ago, something called The Untethered Soul, by Michael A. Singer.

Not the kind of book I’d normally pick up, but the word “untethered” spoke to me in the quiet bookshop. The book cover asked: Do you want to be untethered from past memories or current angst? Freed from worries? Heck, yes. Most of us would be crazy to refuse.

I remembered the patients I saw who suffered from their past or were hurt by the sharp edge of their own inner voices — victims of abuse, say. Held back by the notion they weren’t good enough, that they didn’t matter. The book jacket said something like: Rise above those feelings, learn to tolerate them, allow them to pass through you and out. They’re human feelings, but they’re not you. Good advice, I thought. Maybe some of my former patients have read it. Maybe we should all read it.

And then, maybe a month later, I was at a lunch in the backyard of a new member of our family. There were a handful of us, some of our family, plus two neighbours from the street. There was something special about that street: I grew up on it. In the west end of Hamilton, the escarpment looming above us, busy Aberdeen Avenue just below us. The steep slope between the two made for incredibly fast bike rides, and, on some chilly, snowy days, great toboggan runs. Today it makes for a terrific walk, one part memory-lane, one part stress test.

At the end of lunch, I was kindly offered a plunge into nostalgia: a visit to one of the neighbour's home, the one I’d grown up in. I was amazed at two things. First, how it had shrunk from the giant’s home of my memory to something much more normal-life-sized. Second, maybe mostly, how it all came back: the back staircase that I used to race down, the kitchen with my mother standing at the stove, the leaded glass windows, the bright sunroom. The old-fashioned phone at the foot of the stairs, now gone of course, still there in my memory.

I remember thinking how good it was to have roots and to be reminded of them — the conversations about the neighbours, the memories of my family, the girl I liked just four doors up the street. Memories of my brother and his (and when he moved out, my own) attic man-cave, lodged firmly in my memory as vividly as it was 70 (yes, 70) years before.

Tethered.

On the way home, I wondered about several things: What would my life (and that visit) be like if the memories weren’t so good? Depending on your perspective, I was either incredibly lucky or blessed, maybe both. What would it be like, I wondered, to be someone born into an abusive home? Or born to wear a skin that didn’t carry white male privilege with it? Or a woman born into a man’s body? Or someone born in the eastern half of Ukraine? What would that life have been like?

It seems to me, from this side of those memories and the thoughts about being tethered, that there were a couple lessons here. Maybe more.

First, know which memories are good ones, which ones are checkable. Untether yourself from the bad ones. Hold tight to the ones that warm and feed you. Try it; think of it like cleaning out a closet. Look for the ones you should keep. Especially, look for the ones you should throw away or let pass though you and out.

And the second one? Count your blessings.

Even the poorest of us has them. Remember that, I thought, the next homeless person you see. The next victim of abuse you read about. The next time you see an opportunity to give back.…

Dave Davis, Hamilton Spectator, August 14th, 2022