Do you have a moment in your life that stands out to you? One that you replay over and over? One that you couldn't forget even if you tried? You remember the feeling, the mood, the lighting, the angle. You can see it now.

It may have some rips and rough edges, and you may not remember everything. But nonetheless, it's engrained in your mind. In fact, you don't know if it stands out because it is important, or if it is important because it stands out.

I call these flashes movie moments, because they can be paused and replayed. And sometimes they can be hard to watch, and you'll feel uncomfortable watching with others. Other times you'll want to replay them over and over. Some will leave you in tears. Some will make you smile subtly, even if you don't notice it.

I have a few of these moments.

One of which — I won't describe here — causes me to stop in the middle of whatever I'm doing. There have been a few times I have reflected on this memory, and I have — very literally — stopped walking. I don't even notice as it's happening. I find myself walking slower and slower, until I eventually realize what's going on —I'm doing the thing again ! —and I proceed.

This particular memory is not a bad one, but it's certainly a deep one. Gets me every time.

I call them movie moments because they give me goosebumps. Not because of how extraordinary they were — not necessarily because of the clothes or the makeup or the sound effects — but because of how vivid they were in my life and still are. I even think, how could this have happened to me? And this can be good or bad.

It's not always something you recognize in the moment — these movie moments. It's sometimes something you recognize on the spot, but most times, it's something you come back to later. Something that's value increases as time passes.

I remember what clothes I was wearing the day I got accepted to the University of Michigan—a big red sweater with a black shirt underneath and a pair of blue jeans I actually wore yesterday. It was a Friday. I remember people were saying goodbye to each other in the school parking lot. I remember exactly what it felt like to get that email. I was actually driving out of the parking lot. I stopped, when I saw that I had received it. I honestly think I teared up. The memory then fades a bit and for some reason I remember stopping at a certain intersection — one at which I stopped pretty much every day on my way home from school. It fades again. When I got home I sat in my car for a second. I vividly remember entering my house. My dad was reading in the living room, and my mom was working in an adjacent room. I didn't even see them before I said, "Mom? I got in." They both knew what I meant. It was an exciting moment for all of us. We hugged. I think my mom cried. I had a piano lesson I had to get to shortly thereafter and so I remember running upstairs to my bedroom quickly, and just standing there for a minute. I looked around, and I felt very grateful. And that's all I remember.

A more benign— quite happy— example, but a movie moment nevertheless.

This fall I watched an episode of the sci-fi thriller TV show "Black Mirror." The episode was called "The Entire History of You." It was about a futuristic world — a presumable dystopia — in which people can literally replay their memories exactly as they happened, exactly as they saw, over, and over, and over again. Naturally, as is the spirit of the show, the people — or the protagonist, in this case — go crazy. They have to grapple with the discrepancies between the actual moment as it happened, what they think they remember, and then their interpretations of the replayed footage. Among other variables and a very complex plot, the verdict is that being able to replay everything exactly as it happened is not a blessing.

There is a reason for what we remember and there is a reason for what we don't — at least I believe so. It's annoying to not be able to remember certain things — to have known at one time and now forgotten, or to have never known at all and wonder why.

There is a reason we can't replay everything perfectly. We would go insane. We would find errors, pieces that are missing, inconsistencies. We would see things that shouldn't be — things we weren't meant to see. And that's okay.

As for the moments we do remember — the movie moments, I will continue to call them — there are reasons we remember these too. Some of them exist only for a good laugh— for us to throw our heads back and maybe think, why on earth did that happen? Some exist so that we can remember happy times, perhaps when we find ourselves sad. Some are sad to keep us in check, to remind us of difficult times, the ability to overcome, and the opportunity to keep moving. Maybe some of them are buffers, they carry nothing in particular, but they serve to support the more memorable ones.

But remember fondly, I encourage. Our memories shape us now, as the moments shaped us then.