Wouldn’t it be better for us
to go back to Egypt?
—Numbers 14:3
The Israelites wanted to go back to Egypt. Mentally, they built an Egypt-that-never-was, where they feasted like kings every day, at no cost (Nm 11:5). They were memory-fogged about the real Egypt: a nightmare of slavery and the punishing work of impossible quotas.
Have you been back to the place of your childhood? Those spaces and places that you remember as being so large are shockingly small. The change is not in the reality of the past but in the fanaticizing of it.
Memory does its mischievous work of demolition and reconstruction. The real escapes from memory and erects something that never was.
Has your memory been sneaking in, erasing the reality of what was and erecting your ideal in its place? Is your past wrapped in fact or fantasy?
You are changing.
For better or for worse?