"Why do you exist here?"
Click to viewM.C.A. Hogarth (callsign: Jaguar) put up an excellent post about the role of memory in the quality of existence at her LiveJournal today. Linked here:
http://haikujaguar.livejournal.com/1473608.html
She referenced, in passing, one of the most thought-provoking episodes of Deep Space Nine (which remains my favorite of the Star Trek franchises). It's the DS9 pilot episode ("Emissary"), recap'd in loving detail on Memory Alpha:
http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Emissary_%28episode%29
The episode, among many other things, examined the human capacity, within certain limitations, for choosing WHERE in our personal timeline of experiences we exist from moment to moment. The Jaguar looked at this, and the persistence of memory overall, with an eye to forgiveness and its relationship to forgetting. I think that is a very insightful and broadly applicable principle worthy of further discussion, and Jaguar's post is frankly more relevant to most people than my own thoughts on the matter. So I really would refer you back to what she said, since she said it first, and better, and in a way that is much more useful to people in general. Here's that link again:
http://haikujaguar.livejournal.com/1473608.html
If, however, you persist in staying here...
The Jaguar examines the effects of impermanent memory on the quality and experience of existence based on her personal experiences with highly porous memory banks. By contrast, my personal experiences (until a few years ago) are waaaay down at the other end of the spectrum. To the point where I have in the past been overweeningly proud of my acuity of recollection and my abilities in said arena. And pride goeth before something-or-other, but now I misremember precisely what.
So, by way of full disclosure. I have experienced a certain reduction in my memory-formation-and-maintainance capabilities over the last some-odd years. That process is chemically mediated, and intentional, and reluctantly undertaken, but in my own opinion, ultimately of greater benefit than currently available alternatives. Now, if you polled the people who are stuck spending time with me on a regular basis, they might be even more emphatic about the value or even the necessity of this deliberate degradation of my personal persistence of memory. Which of course begs the question: why would anyone deliberately poke holes in their own memory banks?
Short question; very long, complicated answer.
Required Disclaimers:
1) I don't presume to speak for anybody other than myself.
2) I don't claim to represent a statistical sample greater than n=1.
3) My personal, external, objectively quantifiable experiences are frankly trivial, as compared to those of many of my generational and organizational cohorts.
And that's... All I want to say. At least for the moment. Memory, and the process of remembering, can be tricky at best, shading quickly into treacherous, and at worst, making the subtle crossing into false, tragic, and lethal. Memories can be so persistent, disorienting, acute, and seemingly inescapable as to lead to ultimately false but proximately and terribly compelling conclusions about present options and future opportunities.
So, take a break. Consider this, perhaps:
http://medicmsh.livejournal.com/821.html
And I'll leave you with one of my own best and favorite memories ever. In that remembered moment, I am dancing with my infant son, who is laughing gleefully and waving his arms and legs with utterly irrepressible enthusiasm. I'm holding him in the classic baby-airplane grip, and he is soaring like a wee shuttlecraft in flight, as we dance around and around the teeny master bedroom of a little house in Colorado Springs, with the lights of NORAD just visible on the mountainside as seen through the back window. The sense of boundless possibilities, embodied in that single circumstance and moment and relationship, is perfectly captured, expressed, and accompanied, for me, by the theme music and opening credits of Deep Space Nine, playing in my memory on a discount TV set with one warbly speaker.
For me, today just isn't the right day for moving backwards or forwards from that particular moment, or for further exploration of the foundations and footings of memory, as an entire monumental process and experience. Despite those disclaimers, that particular moment, dancing with my son, is Good, and a good place to exist, at least for a while.
Anyway, I hope that by sharing this particular moment with you, it can serve as a reminder of your own Good moments, when possibilities are wide open and your circumstances are far better than merely tolerable. And if you happen to be at a place where it's not feasible or prudent to venture outside the very present now, you're welcome to borrow this experience of mine, and enjoy it as much as you like, hopefully as a bit of a promissory note for a future that can be different from past and present, and full of unanticipated opportunities.