July 17, 2008
Memory is a funny thing
If one cannot remember a particular event, did it really happen? If one can remember a particular event, does that really mean that it did happen? These are posed rhetorically, I'm not looking for a concrete answer; I bring them up because the subjectivity in the possible answers bears some import for some oddities in the fitting of our personal experiences to reality. I'd like to set the stage for a couple ideas that I have pondered occasionally since grade school, to be expounded upon over the next few posts.
When most people wake up in the morning, you really have only a vague concept of how much time has passed. How many people can remember trying to go to bed early so that something (like Christmas or a birthday) would "come faster?" The act of sleeping puts most in a state of almost complete unawareness. In the morning of course, your personal mental state has changed biologically and the environment is never what it was a picosecond ago, let alone a few hours. But for the most part one's personal set of memorable experiences has hardly increased. Dreaming sometimes leaves vivid memories, but most of them we forget rapidly. Often times, it is only the memories of the memories of dreams that stick with us, and the details of our dreams are oft only preserved once we have engaged in --intra or inter-- personal dialogue concerning them while they are fresh in our heads.
This leads in to the next idea very well. A dream forgotten may as well have never happened. It was there, but it is gone and no accessible evidence remains. I am sure that I have had millions of dreams that I have no knowledge about, to me they might as well have never happened. It is the same with all experiences. What I ate for lunch on this date in 1991, I have no idea; surely I had some sensory input at that time, but I cannot recall it and as such it is as though it never happened. But in only in one sense. That day is no longer a direct part of me, but yet a part of me in an indirect manner.
For as long as I remembered it, the memory was part of my consciousness, affecting me directly until it faded. Memories built on memories, like a growing tower in misty weather, these things build our personal growth even after they fade behind us, because they support those things we can see.
I'd like to keep exploring the topics of our perceptions of time, memory, and existence in the next few posts. Please feel free to comment with anything that comes to your mind. Agree, disagree, point out something I missed, ask me to explicate, contribute, give suggestions.
pjb23 at 11:28 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)