The Enduring Power Of Memory

Whether not it is that you remember any specific happening in your life, there is a very big chance that it had some effect on you. That somewhere deep within you there is an unchangeable facet influenced entirely by one memory. It could have been a good memory, it could have been a bad memory, an awful, painful memory. Yet, to some degree it made you into the person who you are today. I am very much sure that most of the memories that make me who I am today are long forgotten. The feelings behind them nothing but distant whispers on the horizon of the mind. Far away and invisible to the naked eye. Yet these experiences and long forgotten memories have shaped me into the person who sits here now to write this.

I guess you could really say that there are three types of memories, those you have forgotten, those you wish to remember, and those you wish to forget. While it is true that is not entirely definitive, these different types of memories are invaluable into shaping us into the person we eventually will be. The hardships and the happiness all meld together into an intangible object, that object, figuratively speaking is us. It is a culmination of everything we have experienced, an aggregate of our time on this planet. Good, bad, and everywhere in between. Every once in a while, I conduct what could be called spring cleaning of the mind. Where I search through my memories, remember, maybe wish I hadn’t. All of this memories no matter their state are important to me. Without these memories, I am not who I am. I am not Wesley Yumang.

I have a cousin, as many people do. Though I will refrain from stating his name, I cannot hold back that he is one of the most important people in my entire life. He is, to put it into words, my role model. He always was, and even to this day it is the memories of my time with him that I continually hold close to me heart. It is not any one thing, but a collection of mannerisms, and uses of speech. It is in actions and in my responses. They are replicated, and they are replicated from him. Even to this day, in astounding detail I can remember the joy I spent playing with him before I was even ten. I can remember even into my teenage years that I would look forward to any event at which he would be present. It is seldom in anybody’s life that they will have anybody who means just as much to them as my cousin meant to me. A large out of the me who I am to this day is because of him. The things I like, the ways I act. I almost consider it a childish act of idolatry. To try and replicate what I had seen as this plateau of character. He was who I wanted to be, the golden standard I held myself by. They are times I never want to forget.

If only the memories I had actually forgotten were those that I wish I had. There are memories I hold in my brain that I’d rather not. It is not easy, it would be much easier to cast them out into the wind. Release them into oblivion, like a bottomless pit from which pain can be sent into free of consequence. Yet, in all my time ruminating on what I like to call painful memories, I cannot help but accept that they are equally as important to me. I would never go as far as to say that I possess any emotional scars, I have lived an easy life. I have nothing to complain about. Yet no matter how good a life is, there is nevertheless a memory that hurts. A memory that hurts on a level that no matter how articulate you are, you can’t describe. It is a spiritual pain almost, not quite physical, but not enough to elicit tears. It is these unproven wounds which shape us just as much as our blissful nostalgic archives. It is every time we’ve fallen, every time life kicked us down into the art, and gravity felt no pity for us. Pushing us down again and again. They hurt, but, we are only who we are as a consequence of both joy and suffering. I beg forgiveness is I seem overdramatic, but, it is memories of hurt and sadness that affect us the most. Happy memories shape us into the person we want to be, it is a lit path that walks a golden road towards some imagined nirvana. Yet the opposite is survival. No matter how bad the past was, no matter how much it wounded us, we lived, I lived. Nothing I have lived through has ever killed me. The memories I classify as painful, are ones that too should never be left behind.

There is a great deal of things I wish I could remember. Just the other day at work I heard a melody that I could not for the life of me remember where I’d first heard it. Somewhere in my house there is a sketchbook containing a good deal of my childhood work, yet no matter how hard I look, I cannot remember the safe place I had set it down to avoid losing it to the garbage truck’s weekly visits. Some of our most important memories, are ones we do not even remember, memories long gone, and unrecoverable. I act in certain ways, you act in certain ways, why? Can we really remember the reason behind many of the things in our life? I say not, and for good reason. Some things in life are perhaps better left unexplained. You cannot explain the reason behind who you are, you cannot break down and create a comprehensible database of cause and effect. Nor can you trace any specific behavior or thought to a clear impetus. Somewhere deep within us I like to believe there is a storehouse of all that we’ve forgotten. Kept safe under lock and key for the day when eventually we might need it. A signal sent through the electrical pathways in our brain, set to memory. That which we can’t even recall has such a big effect on us that it is really quite hard to explain. Maybe some of our most important memories are locked behind the haze which obscures so much of our past. Like a twisted and confusing maze, at the heart of which resides a fountain of knowledge about ourself. Yet, it is not the destination towards that truth, that insight into ourself. It is the journey, it is the locked away memories that affect us up to the present, and it is the occasional stroke of luck bringing us one step closer to what we seek for. As is the power of what we can’t recall.

Memories never really go away, somewhere, the happy, the sad, the forgotten, they are stored off in an unknown part of our psyche. They are a treasure to be guarded, because they are not simply a record of everything that has happened, they are the purest manifestation of being. Memory represents us in our most basic form. A massive list of effects brought on by causes both good bad and long gone. We are who we are due to memories, and every single day of our lives we add to that stockpile. Every new memory precious in its own way, whether or not it is important enough to stand at the forefront of our mind. They are nonetheless memories, and memories endure.

Memories whether good or not,

Are never truly or ever forgot.

After long lost memories we journeyed and sought,

Though nonetheless they remain gone and forgot,

Good and peace of mind some brought,

Pray memories are not forgot.

Pain they bring and pain they brought,

Some things are best unforgot.

Memories like steel endure,

Of their importance we can be sure.