Memory
and Meaning
“Memory
is not just the imprint of the past time upon us; it is the keeper of
what is meaningful for our deepest hopes and fears.”
Rollo
May
I
am working on a memoir of sorts called Old Crazy Town. Stories
of times and people in the small mountain town where I grew up. In
doing this series, I have discovered the limits of memory. I'm told
that as we grow older we remember childhood better than we remember
what we ate for breakfast, and that has the ring of truth to it for
me. The problem is that what I think I remember is only, well...what
I think I remember. That is, I'm not sure how it lines up with
reality.
When
we are children, there is so much we don't know about the world;
which doesn't mean that children don't see and try to make sense of
what goes on around them. Children are fairly accurate barometers of
feeling states, since that center of the brain is well developed
before the “interpretation” centers are up and running. They
feel, but don't necessarily know what they are feeling or why. They
see, but may not accurately comprehend.
Our
memories are incomplete translations. They are composed of what we
think we remember, what we have been told happened, and the often
murky meanings we attached to it. We essentially write our own
biography based on a mishmash of misinformation and
misunderstanding, filled with meaning. If my sister were alive, I
could check things out with her, but chances are good that her view
would be as different from mine as if we had not been in the same
place at the same time.
All
of this is not to say that we should give up and just erase our
memory banks. We couldn't if we tried. But it is to say, that we
should not place absolute faith in what we think we remember.
Hindsight and adulthood cast memory in a cooler light. We live, we
make our own mistakes, we choose our own paths which sometimes end up
in blind alleys and swamps full of snapping turtles. And then, we
back-track to see how the heck we got here from there. Insights pop in that we
hadn't had before. Hopefully, having experienced our own foibles, we
view our families from a less elevated position. We find the humor in
much of what happened, and feel our love connections more
deeply rooted. Most of all, we realize how they shaped us. So much we
thought of as ours alone, is truly a gift from them.
In
the Spirit,
Jane
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