Memories
Our experiences teach us how to be in the world, for better or worse.
Memories form the stories that we tell, not just to each other but to ourselves and about ourselves and about the world, our place within it. Remembered stories come together to form increasingly complex narratives, the intricate and messy and contradictory narratives our lives are made of.
In this way our memories form the stuff of our lives, stored up inside our physical bodies and in our brain cells and neurons, reinforcing our identities through the manipulation of our actual material selves.
Memories are...us.
Memories can be anchors at the bottom of the winter sea, holding us to the truth of better things when all around is barren and frigid and churning. Memories can hold out hope for us that what we see is only one inch deep, and below are living roots that sprouted once and will sprout again.
Memories can keep us fed through the winter.
But the thing about being remembering creatures is that we can't escape the past even when we want to. Sometimes we live through winters that are too cold, droughts that are too dry, losses that are too great to know whether or not we can make it through another.
And when that happens, memories are not sure-and-true anchors on a stormy frigid sea; they are leviathans below the surface, tossing our boats and threatening to swallow us alive.
Why does the past hold onto us so?
I recently learned that trees have memories, too. In their adolescence, trees are reckless things; they will greedily drink up all the water in early summer, depleting the soil with sure belief that more rain will come - and it usually does. But some years rain does not come. If a tree lives through a particularly difficult drought, it will drink slower for the rest of its life. It will grow a thick protective layer on the surface of its leaves and make its cells more watertight, to avoid losing moisture to the air. In essence, the tree becomes much more cynical about the beneficence of its surroundings. It trusts the goodness of the world a lot less. It develops narratives, one might say, about the way the world will treat it and what it must do in order to survive.
Even when there is plenty of rain the next year.
Perhaps one of the best and worst parts of being alive is being held by our memories. I find those learned patterns of story-making to be both incredibly helpful for resilience and incredibly harmful when circumstances change. The life I am living today, with these friends and these family members, this school and this job, this house and these neighbors, is safe and warm; but the leviathan under the water, operating under outdated narratives, is real and scary.
Why does the past hold onto us so?
We are different than trees in a few important ways. For one, we can change our narratives and retell our memories in ways that help us understand them without fear.
(We can recognize the drought is over.)
We can continue to look for evidence that we are safe, that we have moved out of the danger zone, and that we are in the driver's seat of our lives.
I'm not sure the work will ever be done, but I don't think that makes it any less crucial. Memories make us, but we get to choose how to tell them.
Maybe that's what it means to be alive.
Memories form the stories that we tell, not just to each other but to ourselves and about ourselves and about the world, our place within it. Remembered stories come together to form increasingly complex narratives, the intricate and messy and contradictory narratives our lives are made of.
In this way our memories form the stuff of our lives, stored up inside our physical bodies and in our brain cells and neurons, reinforcing our identities through the manipulation of our actual material selves.
Memories are...us.
Memories can be anchors at the bottom of the winter sea, holding us to the truth of better things when all around is barren and frigid and churning. Memories can hold out hope for us that what we see is only one inch deep, and below are living roots that sprouted once and will sprout again.
Memories can keep us fed through the winter.
But the thing about being remembering creatures is that we can't escape the past even when we want to. Sometimes we live through winters that are too cold, droughts that are too dry, losses that are too great to know whether or not we can make it through another.
And when that happens, memories are not sure-and-true anchors on a stormy frigid sea; they are leviathans below the surface, tossing our boats and threatening to swallow us alive.
Why does the past hold onto us so?
I recently learned that trees have memories, too. In their adolescence, trees are reckless things; they will greedily drink up all the water in early summer, depleting the soil with sure belief that more rain will come - and it usually does. But some years rain does not come. If a tree lives through a particularly difficult drought, it will drink slower for the rest of its life. It will grow a thick protective layer on the surface of its leaves and make its cells more watertight, to avoid losing moisture to the air. In essence, the tree becomes much more cynical about the beneficence of its surroundings. It trusts the goodness of the world a lot less. It develops narratives, one might say, about the way the world will treat it and what it must do in order to survive.
Even when there is plenty of rain the next year.
Why does the past hold onto us so?
We are different than trees in a few important ways. For one, we can change our narratives and retell our memories in ways that help us understand them without fear.
(We can recognize the drought is over.)
We can continue to look for evidence that we are safe, that we have moved out of the danger zone, and that we are in the driver's seat of our lives.
I'm not sure the work will ever be done, but I don't think that makes it any less crucial. Memories make us, but we get to choose how to tell them.
Maybe that's what it means to be alive.
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