Memory

I think my brain is getting smaller as I am growing older… of course that’s not true but I feel as though my brain is retaining less and less information. It’s funny how back in the days I could remember things to their minute details – things like who won which match in a particular round of footy by what margin, or who won which year of tennis championship in how many sets, or who sang which song with the recitation of the lyrics. Now, it seems sometimes I can’t even be bothered listening to the lyrics of the songs, let alone learning them! I guess as we are getting older we have other more important things in our mind – family, work, love, friends and the looming future. I still watch my tennis or footy or any other sport but they just don’t really stick in my head as they used to. There are only 24 hours in a day and 365 days in a year so it’s your choice of how you spend your time, energy and attention. I guess my memory has reflected the shift of my attention in the last couple of years.

Memory is an amazing thing. I have always been fascinated by it. It’s something that is so personal but yet you can’t really control it. There are times you just wish you can forget something and would trade anything in order to do so. On the contrary, I am sure you have experienced the horrible feeling of not remembering something special. But I think to some extent, you can choose what stays in your memory. You can choose to fill it up with laughter, grudges or regrets. It’s definitely a task that is easier said than done and it’s a delicate skill that requires a lot of determination, acceptance and letting go.

We live our lives through experiences. As time goes by, these experiences become a history, a history of our past. Sometimes, we can get caught up by the past and have it as the basis of our current actions. It’s like a reference point – because of this and that from the past, therefore I am doing this and that now. Honestly, I try not to work like that. I’d like to think that everything changes, so why get stuck in the past. And I am always curious to know how accurate our memories are… I am not talking about some facts or scores of a footy match, but say for something that happened years ago, do everyone involve in it have the same recall? Or would there be slight differences? There’s nothing wrong with being confident with your capacity to remember but with added personal emotions and feelings – do these ‘memories’ really reflect what happened that day? Am I wrong by saying I'm fascinated by the way memory can diffuse fact? What about believing in this quote – Memory is a complicated thing, a relative to truth, but not its twin.