Victor Hugo said: “Intelligence is the wife, imagination is the mistress, memory is the servant.” Do you feel that your memories work for you, or do you feel beholden to your memories?

Memories get the best of me sometimes. It happens when you are human. I’m still learning to get the memories to work for me.
I get stuck on an unpleasant memory once in awhile. There are some memories like being homeless and seeing wet cardboard boxes on the street. Wet cardboard boxes are etched in my memory for life, probably because someone had slept there. I might be sleeping there soon. I was not exempt from the wet cardboard box.
Since then I’ve tried to use the memory as a motivator to not sleep anywhere near a cardboard box. The memory has also been a motivator to do something about homelessness. Anything is better than nothing.