I often think about how strange memory is. A phenomenon that gives longevity to something that dies moment by moment. A movement, a word, a feeling that was there briefly. It had no intention of stopping, staying, or speaking. But you found it and made it speak, made it stay, gave it a long life within you. Memory, then, grants life. In a new form, fuller and more complete.
Memory isn’t just about extending the existence of something, but about bringing things, events, and people back to life. Memory gives them true life, beyond the ordinary. What would autumn be without the paintings, the music, the poetry that are born when it passes through our memory? Perhaps a yearly death, a departure from earthly life. But Vivaldi’s autumn gives it true life, the promised and eternal life.
Memory is also a judge of reality. It decides what deserves to live and what must die, because only what remains within it will continue to live. Everything else will drown in the abyss of forgetfulness. Humans, as beings, do not live on the plane of animals, who live or die moment by moment, inevitably followed by oblivion. Humans live in the world of memory, in the world of true life. Perhaps, when described in the Book of Genesis, the creation of man from clay, and the breath of God entering his nostrils to give him life, is in essence, memory. And the forgetting of God’s command brings death, a departure from true life.
Memory holds within it both joy and pain, good and bad. It makes a different kind of judgment, not simply between good and evil, but between what is important and what is not. The good serves as fuel for the continuation and motivation of life, while the bad transforms into a lesson, thus turning into something good—if you allow it to.
Memory, then, is the presentation of eternity in this imperfect plane dominated by death. Memory overcomes the ordinary, filters the river of life, and makes it more perfect. Memory is a sacred gift, showing us what is important and what is not. Its language is somewhat unclear to us, and our task is to understand what is a lesson and what is a good gift.
