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Musing over mysterious memory
Tom Hanks once said in a movie: “Mumma says life is like a box of chocolates; you never know what you are gonna get.” Life is a secret package full of surprises.Tom Hanks once said in a movie: “Mumma says life is like a box of chocolates; you never know what you are gonna get.” Life is a secret package full of surprises. A person is composed of a million feelings, a thousand thoughts and a hundred memories, someone has rightly remarked. If we take a literary look, this topic itself seems comical. Really, it is comical. After all, memory is synonymous to life, isn’t it? What’s a life without memory?
It is something inexplicable. In the scarcity of memory, a person’s condition becomes similar to that of a goldfish. A goldfish is a pretty, beautiful, forgetful fish whose memory is believed to have a span of about only three seconds. Poor fishy, it must often get scared of its own shadow! This means that memory is life’s primary and necessary need, in the absence of which a person becomes merely a mass of bones and skin.
Basically, by memory we mean the ability to remember things. In a broader sense, memory is a system that has the capacity of compiling past experiences and storing them safely somewhere in the brain so that it can be brought into habitual behaviour. It is because of memory that we are able to accomplish our daily tasks. Moreover, for the development of human, kudos goes to dear memory. Had it not existed, our fore-fore parents would have forgotten how fire was first lit, how the first clothes were stitched, and how we were born. Which ultimately means: we would not have existed in the first place. All these wonderful things would not have existed. It helps you carve your beautiful imagination into reality. Plus, memory helps in analysing the past and to plot for the future.
Memory, thus, is a wonderful element of our lives. However, in his seminal work Dream Analysis, philosopher Sigmund Freud highlights: “Forgetfulness is bliss.” Had we not been able to forget, we would be buried under that debris of memory. Imagine yourself traumatised because of something bad that happened to you in the past. There are people who have had survived moments we can’t even imagine. For instance, imagine yourself in a frail quake-hit building, with corpses all around you. Even remembering these kinds of things gives us an ache in heart. Now, imagine losing your family right in front of your eyes. (It sends shivers down my spine writing this.) So, this might be the only dark side of memory that exists.
Memory is not always sweet. It’s not always about being with loved ones, hanging around with the ones you feel comfortable. It’s not about visiting mesmerising places. There are lots of memories that we live with that are worth forgetting. They only help in adding grief to your heart, adding loads to your already heavy life. And then, there are some memories that can make you insomniac and you would want to wake up with amnesia. This, I think, is the only disadvantage of our beloved memory.
Well, such is the story of memory. It is lovely, dark and deep. It is mysterious. However, sticking to memory isn’t the only task you’ve got. Everyone has got miles to go before they sleep.
Shah is a +2 student at Nightingale HSS, Kupondole