To be or not to be... does it matter?

Sometimes, we sit too long and we think too much. We allow our minds to wander a little forward and a lot back into memories. I am forever hearing that you must move forward or you will get taken away by the past. I sat here today and thought about that. I wondered if it could be true.
Our past memories and experiences are what formed the person, created the very personality, good, bad, and the ugly, that we are today. A person that for whatever reason, loses their memories is empty. They have to start all over from block one and build memories. They have nothing to base their everyday life on... to say "this is a good day" or a bad day. They depend on each and every day to educate them, teach them lessons long ago learned before they forgot. Their lives are all new and they wait for each experience to show them something new.
Is there a way to move forward without the lessons and memories we have lived coming along with us? Would it not be better... Isn't it better, to bring along the life's experiences with us as we travel to our future? I have lived a full life and have seen and been a part of many beautiful things in this walk. I have loved and been loved in the most beautiful and precious ways. My life continues to know blessings daily and yes, there are some very sad times in my life too. Losses that people tell me will go away one day. Sadness that according to the world won't seem so harsh one day. I wonder.
I think of my world... the world I live in today, without the past. That's the good and the bad. What or who would i have been today if not for the events that happened in my life? No blame or fingers. We are where we are and no one is to point at but ourselves. But still, surely with different circumstances, Example, had I not been brought up to fear God and respect his word, perhaps i would have been more inclined to do things I knew to be wrong. Without the parents I had, the family closeness we shared, maybe I would not care the way I do. If you take away the hand on my shoulder that was my blind brothers, remove the 24 years of love and hospitals that my Love and I shared and endured...perhaps my compassion would be less than it is. These things and so much more made me the man I am today. Not a bad man by any measure, though some may disagree, but a man that lives each day, wondering if he has done all he could for those that love and have loved him. Feeling the deepest pain, deeper than most could imagine at just the slightest thought that he may have failed in someones trust in him or their friendship they shared.
Today I sit and I remember. I don't think that one has to leave the past behind to share the future. I don't think that it is a requirement for knowing happiness that anything that has made us sad, be left behind. And yet, my tears, my regrets, my very life seem to revolve around the things that have brought me here today. I am Happy. I am loved. I have a good life. And it should be enough. I have been loved more than any one man EVER deserved, certainly THIS man. And still, I cry. Still I search for that something that will validate all of the blessings I have been given in this life. I have not found it yet. The blessings keep coming and I, I continue to seek atonement for things done or not done. They are real in my heart and that is all that matters. And so I "atone."
Today, you have sat with a man that strives with all he is to make the entire world happy. To take away their sorrow and give them smiles they thought didn't exist. A man, a Bipolar man that each and every day must tell himself all of the reasons it is a good day to stay. A man that some will call weak, some will say is strong and others, will say just needs to "Buck up." People that love me yet do not want to understand that this IS REAL! It is as real as it gets. And one day, when it is done... then I will forget. Today is not that day.
Don't pity me or cry for me. We all have our crosses to bear. Just know that when I am far away, when I look through you instead if at you, that I stand always on the edge of the world, looking out. What you say to me or that single smile or frown may take me to places I have waited for or feared all of my life.
Don't let your memories ever fade. Imagine as I do sometimes, a world without you ever having been in it. What would be different???? What would be the same? Have I really ever influenced any ones Life?????