Memories

This year, 2022, is sprinting to an end. The year that I turned 70. My February birthday seems like yesterday but the planet has almost done a full trip around the sun since then.

I started thinking about memories in the middle of the night. It was all a bit dreamlike mainly because I left my ear buds in and was listening to random podcasts in my sleep, one of which was a discussion about where our memories are stored. I have “glibly” assumed that my memories are stored away as mental pictures in my mind and I have also “glibly” concocted that my marvellous, miraculous brain has nothing to do with conjuring up these pictures. In other words I have never done my own research or gone through my own thought/logic process to look at this conundrum about where all of this mental energy might be stored or if it is even stored at all. But in this day and age when external hard drives are getting smaller in size and bigger in capacity it’s not at all out of the question that there is some mighty but infinitesimally small spiritual storage system that retains the memories of my existence.

There of course is also the jolting memory of photographs that has to be considered. This is a whole hornet’s nest that needs to be taken into account. Old familiar photographs that I have shared my life with.

I have no doubts about the beauty and complexity of memory. It is what sets me apart from the other 8 billion souls on Planet Earth. These are my own very personal recollections of what I have experienced during my lifetime, my thoughts, reactions, secrets, my responses, music, movies, loves, personal experiences, wins and losses. In some ways they are what I clasp onto, possessions that I use to help me understand my own identity, my own journey, my own evolution from my childhood until now. I can look back at the jumble of images that I cart around all mixed up like a big deep drawer where nothing really has it’s own place but is simply mixed up with everything else.

I can lay in the dark and go wandering through different periods of my life, getting lost in the years, the memories of people who I have shared my journey with, the things we got up to together, wondering where they are now and why they are no longer part of my life. Yep, it’s all there. Sometimes just as a concept, at others much clearer moments that seem almost real in present time. All gone in the past but still there with me in the present to review when I please.

I really don’t think these memories have a big hold over me anymore. I don’t hold onto them like I used to. They once gave me comfort and acted as a yardstick to define my identity. I now have a more zen outlook toward existence, whatever will be will be.

In some ways my old fear of death was simply a fear that I was going to one day have to give up my memories but now I strive to live in the present. To experience my existence in the fleeting moments in which it occurs. In the past I somehow connected time, thought, memories, consciousness, sensation without differentiating. They are all components of this miracle that I am currently experiencing. I don’t really even need to understand them. Maybe just being capable and aware of observing them as seperate elements of individual existence could be a good staging point.

If I am honest with myself I have to admit that my memories are only as accurate as I believe them to be. Maybe if I could recall them exactly as they were they would cease to exist, maybe it’s because I’ve subtly changed what actually happened that make some of them stand out. It’s interesting to note how one unwittingly embellishes stories of ones past when passing them on to others. You’ve got to have a good story to pass on don’t you!

All I know for now is that these mental images do exist, some clearer than others, some immortalised because they are like anchors in the sea of infinity that make existence seem safer.

I should just accept that they are there and somehow contribute to my current identity and how the rest of the world sees me and if I’m honest, how I view myself, like rungs on a never ending ladder that I keep climbing.

All I am really certain about is that I exist now. I am conscious of the sensation of my own body and the current thoughts that I conjure up, my reactions to the sensations around me in and in my body. When I do this I get very objective to what I identify with and know that it is not really me. It is part of the physical universe that I am currently playing this game of life in. My only solace in regard to infinity is to accept that pretty much everything that I measure existence by is transient and that there are multitudinous possibilities, the same as there always have been. There is no past and no future, only now.