How many movies have you watched, so far, in your lifetime?

According to Redbox, the average American watches over 5,000 movies in their lifetime. Though I could not find a statistic for it, imagine now how many of those movies are a rerun of our favorite films? No matter if it is Star Wars, a Disney movie or the infamous Christmas classics, we can all admit we are suckers for tuning back into these timeless favorites.

The real question is, why? Why do we repeatedly watch the same movies each year? Could it be that the characters hit a soft spot in our hearts? Or maybe watching them puts us back to those moments we treasure most.

The same concept can also be said for the music we listen to. We all have those favorite songs we throw on over and over when the mood is right. Many studies have been done to prove the power of music and how it affects our emotions and memories. Hearing a song that you listened to when you were a teen skating at the roller rink, can easily bring back those feelings of being young and vibrant when you are older.

When we take uninterrupted time to sit back and contemplate or reminisce about our past…. all of the good moments in our lives, the happy times with our partners, parents, siblings, friends…. anyone special in our life, we rebuild and relive those moments, just as we replay our favorite movie.

Another view of this is the inevitable concept of death. We will all experience it at some point in our lives, so how we live and view our experiences with it will determine how we view life itself. If we choose to find only the negative outlook on death and the life of the deceased, then that will be our repeated outlook in any future experience of death. If we choose to never talk about the deceased and the good experiences in their life, then all of it ceases to exist. One perfect example of this is the Mexican Tradition of Día de los Muertos, where the living celebrates the lives of those who have passed on, in a way that the deceased would have; by sharing a meal with them, playing music and celebrating their existence.

We choose our reruns just as we choose the movies or songs in our lives. These are vital steps in our everyday life. This concept of finding good in our experiences helps us to remember all of the good and how insignificant and unimportant the stress and negativity we encounter, really is. It keeps us in check, remembering that those positive moments and people were placed in our lives for a purpose. To experience those moments so we can always relive them as a reminder of what good things are always around us.

More importantly, instead of ignoring and forgetting the bad things in our lives, how can we turn them into positive experiences? For if we hide from the bad and negative experiences, we also hide from the opportunity to create a positive experience for ourselves or for someone else later in life.

If we continually look to create these positive experiences and avoid dwelling on the negative things, or even hiding from them, we will create moments that we look forward to revisiting over and over.