This is something which has always terrified me: forgetting. And I forget a lot. I forget more and more as the years go by. But what is this memory I cling to?
Even at its best, I am told we only ever remember a very small percentage of what happens to us and I suppose that’s actually a good thing, or we’d live everything twice: first in the reality and then again in our minds. And while we would be reliving that memory, we would be missing a new bit of life, and therefore a new memory.
Why do we remember what we remember? How do we go by selecting what to remember and what not to? Which criteria do we use? Most of all why is it so important for us to remember at all?
It’s almost as if we believe our memories are an intrinsic part of ourselves. It is undeniable that they play a huge role in shaping our personalities.
How disappointing though when we realise how memories of a some shared occasion can defer so much! You remember it was morning, they, that it was afternoon, you remember it as a funny occasion, they found it depressing. You remember so-and-so was there, they say - definitely not! -
Whose version is the real one? Is there a one truth? Are both distortions?
In an instant what was clear as day in your mind is as if it never happened and you’re left with the feeling of void. Something that made so much sense to you, that explained why a series of consequential happenings took place making you the person you know yourself to be, suddenly has lost all meaning.
Reality of our past, as we were convinced it was, has ceased to be. Can it ever be regained?
I have always kept a diary since I could write... when I read these records, jealously kept in boxes at the bottom of my wardrobe, in a state of shame, embarrassment and fascination, I ask myself if that was really me writing …. Did that really happened to me? I don’t quite remember it that way, oh yes, I’d forgotten so-and-so and oh what a nice person she was, I wonder where she is now... I can still see her smile! What else? Not much, actually hardly anything at all.
What is the time volume of memories? Because of memories, we are the people we see ourselves today. But are our memories just a big fib?
Who is Tara in my diary? She, like everyone else, made her choices, as young as she was, with hardly any experience, without the understanding of the world I have now. Yet here I am because of what she decided then,: she created the basis on which I built my life, the castle in which I now live.
As a foreigner, wherever I am, whenever I go, I’m in perpetual research of a safety point, a need to find a certain and non-confutable reference point, like Past, for example. I’ve always believed you could count on Past, because it has past and it can’t be changed, for good or for bad. Now however, the comfort I used to find remembering my childhood is somehow marred. It gives me a feeling of not being integrate and complete. We cannot be sure that the treasured anecdotes correspond to the stories we have always told ourselves.
The only way forward, the only way to feel truly alive, is to let go of the Past - let go of what was, even if it seems a betrayal towards all those who are no longer with us, those made a difference in this world, in my world, in young Tara‘s world - she who did her best.