The Filing Cabinets Of Our Mind Elita Sohmer Clayman

There is a new type of furniture I just learned about today. I did not see it yet in the furniture ads of well-known furniture stores here in Baltimore. I did not see it at Staples or Office Depot who sell lots of office furniture along with office supplies. Its name is a multi-file cabinet. What you say, Staples and Office Depot and even smaller office stores all sell them. This is a special custom made file, it is made to store memories that are unpleasant and to file them away and never open the doors again to look at them or think about them. You relegate them to an obscure point in your mind and you do not want to give them credence or credibility anymore in your thoughts.

Perhaps they annoyed you, disparaged you, dishonored you or you just plain old did not care for them. They never had a good word to say to you, about you or for you and even though you were always pleasant, kind and caring to them, they were not to you.

My good friend Dennis H. Myers gave me this idea about these new filing cabinets. We shall call them bad filing cabinets of the mind. Our mind, your mind or their mind. We welcome kind and caring thoughts to our other cabinets on the other side of the room of our mind. These cabinets are made of beautiful wood, white or brown or even black. They hold the file of our happy memories associated with delightful visits, loving greeting or email cards, small gifts given with lots of thought. The gifts need not to have been expensive in cost, they were expensive in thought. The thought about us and us to them.

When I was a kid and Aunt Jenny and Aunt Sarah made me a small satin pouch for my birthday or December holiday season, they inserted ten copper pennies in it for their gift to me. I loved them so much and they me that I saved the satin pouches until I left home to get married and somehow they got disposed of. I loved those homemade gifts from them. They each contributed five pennies, making a total of ten. That was a lot of money for them to spend, since they both did not earn much in a salary.

My blind uncle George gave me and my brother piano lessons as an added music benefit to the other piano lessons we took from a music teacher. He did so with love and desire for his nephew and niece that he adored. My Aunt Annie made my brother and me, cookie Kichel sweet pieces like a big flat cookie whenever she thought we would come to visit her and Uncle Jake. They loved us young kids since they had no grandchildren from their three children. These were good happenings that I filed in my happy cabinets in my mind and I still remember them seventy years later with admiration and fondness. Uncle George, Aunts Annie, Sarah and Jenny were delightful relatives of mine, one from Mom’s side and three on Dad ‘side. My late friend Virginia Louise Woerner left me many moments of good pieces in my kind file cabinets section. She always signed her greeting cards to me sent via regular mail, since she had no computer and said “peace, love, blessings and hugs.” She too is in my mind file of happy memories of wonderful persons.

In the other files, there are some messages and thoughts and they belong in the difficult memory files. I will not say anymore, other than after learning about these files that I should have from Dennis, I do not think about them anymore and that makes the good thought files even feel more important than ever.

It is like the politicians now during this presidential election period of less than  three months who are throwing out obnoxious taunts and irrelevant tidbits about one another in television ads; then afterwards when one is the winner and the other the loser, will kiss and make up for the benefit of the public. They too I guess will file their unhealthy, unkind and usually not true thoughts into a file called the forget and forgive us file.

These files can get pretty ugly from the politicians and even unpleasant in everyday people’s mind. It is better to leave one with a pleasant thought, than one that comes and hurts the person every time they think of the remark or comment.

It is said that happy people try to make others happier, that unhappy people transpose their unhappiness to other because it makes them feel superior.

Superior they are not. I heard that on one of my soap operas, the head writer who is a member of the founding man and woman who created and wrote the story for over twenty-five years, has been let go by I guess the new regime who took over the owning of the story. The cast is overwhelmed with grief on this young editor/ writer of the story who has been the head writer for many years. The actors are all suspicious as to who will be let go by being written out by the new writers. They are all jumpy and nervous as to the extent of their jobs being in jeopardy and worrying about the new writers who may tend to eliminate the older actors with their older storylines for young people’s stories.

The old saying that no one is safe in a job is pronounced here. The writer’s husband who is a big shot with the production and has no say in her job there; had the unhappy task to relate to his wife Maria that she was out pronto.

So sometimes when the new comes in and the old is forsaken, it is sad and the good memories of the older actors get filed away into a memory file that becomes unimportant to the new group.

Let us try to file the good thoughts and memories into files that we look at now and then with love and admiration. Let the files containing the bad actions be lost in the confines of the place called our minds.

Let our minds run with peace, activity and harmony and our files of the good times be dusted off, cared for and admired often when we ‘look’ at them. Let the dust cover the bad filing cabinets into obscurity and no vision of them forever.

May our minds remember with love, good thoughts and happiness and adhere to this thought “those who feel the need to judge the beauty of others, know they are unpleasant people. Because every one single person on this earth is beautiful and do not let anyone tell you different.”

The files of your mind should remain active and useful and never forget them even if you are busy. The other files “just file them away into oblivion.” Shakespeare said “oblivion is the swallowing gulf.” Let them be swallowed up and gone from us.

We know what file we want to use. The file of happiness.