A disclaimer: As much of my writing often seems to do, I do not write this to evoke sadness or sympathy in any way. I write as a medium to help me understand my own thoughts better, as forcing the expression of an otherwise abstract idea is in a way, teaching yourself. I share this information to the world with the continuing goal that spreading ideas is for the betterment of our society as a whole.
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Thinking too much, as I generally do, I have begun to understand my own motivations for creating a personal history. Over the past ten plus years, I have collected trinkets (almost as if it were second nature) from significant events in my life -- homecoming flowers, movie stubs, business cards. Now in a time of interim, I find myself struggling to piece my past back together and write about it while I still remember.
The point of this post will come in somewhat of a lengthy roundabout path. Bear with me.
I once heard a perspective that described our existence to be fleeting on a day-to-day basis. Some part of the potato that I eat tomorrow will replace pieces of my body as I constantly shed and excrete older versions. Twenty years from now, how much of my brain and body will still contain the same atoms that it does today?
It's a constant upload and download, somewhat like one interpretation of teleportation. You would not actually be transfered from one place to another, but rather you would be destroyed in one place and recreated in another. Or even the idea of "downloading" your brain into a computer. Why are these ideas so strange when that is essentially what our body already does, just in a slower manner? We eat, slough off waste, rebuild, and continue living. Even our bones are constantly breaking down and rebuilding.
Now when we store information into our brains, we forge new neuronal pathways and/or strength existing ones. Our brain cells must constantly undergo maintenance, so technically the biological/physical component of our 'thoughts' are also constantly being deconstructed and reconstructed as required by the dynamic characteristic of the human body.
All of this to say, our knowledge is so very temporary. Our memories, too.
Once, I was given the statistic that our brain can hold a million unique things at one time. When the capacity is full, it starts erasing to make room for the new. Most people hit capacity around adulthood.
We tend to define ourselves and find identity by what we believe, what we know, and what we have experienced. Then assuming all of the above maintains some kernel of truth, how could we ever hope to know who we are? Even now as I go through my trinkets of memory lane, I can no longer recall why I saved them or what they were. That thought is terrifying.
There are certain moments in my life that I tell myself, I cannot forget this. And ultimately, those are the few memories that I do not lose as easily. But as I learn more and absorb more, even those snippets into my past will begin to fade.
My memory fades quicker than most. I struggle to retain short term events and thus I grasp tightly onto the few events I do remember. Maybe that is why I take offense when accused of remembering something wrong. I will admit it if I cannot recall, but I exert so much effort in trying to retain the few that I can... that it hurts to be told that my efforts were all in vain, that I remembered it wrong.
I laugh when people call me smart; no, I'm not smart. I just have a knack for faking intelligence. There is a reason I am a 'jack of all trades, master of none.' Yes, part of it I can attribute to simple lack of sustained interest in one topic. But, part of it just has to do with the fact that a prolonged dedication to one subject often becomes disheartening. Allow any short break in my studies and I completely forget.
What did I learn in college? I could tell you the major life lessons and the more humbling events that occurred. But there is extremely little I could tell you about what I was tested on.
I highly highly respect those who have proficient memories. I can sense exactly when my brain must fill in the blanks and insert false confidence in what I say in the hopes that what I say will be considered truth -- all because I could not remember.
Teaching has always come easier to me partly because I empathize with those who are struggling to understand a concept or an idea. It took me ages to finally commit at least that facet of what I learned to memory; this gives me patience when dealing with my students -- I know their pain.
I began this project of 'personal history' (to document as best I can my life's events until now) because I do not want to lose my sense of self. I do not want to be a jaded adult twenty years from now unable to truly remember who I was years before with only the slight overly-romanticized semblance of who I once was. When I tell my kids who I am and who I was, they should know the whole truth, not the parts my subconscious chose to remember.
Why is it that kids often disregard the "Well, when I was young..." stories of the past? Because even as a child we can recognize the lack of factuality and objectivity in these stories. And in most cases there is little hope for viewing those stories from a different angle, from a different source.
It frightens me that a book can seem new and fresh when I know I have read the story years before. The Harry Potter series has passed through my eyes seven times, and each time I find it new and exciting.
What is the point of reading if it will only be forgotten? Is its purpose really just to gain reading comprehension skills or open the mind to new viewpoints that may only be forgotten years later? What goal is there in learning when ultimately what we learn may be sacrificed for some thought that our brain deemed more important or more necessary in that current moment?
As I said, knowledge scares me. It's fleeting, and yet we have little choice but to depend on it.
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