Memory Sustains Life

I have always had a good memory. Except for students in school, memory is a faculty in general disrepute. It is far better to be spontaneous, instinctive, and bold. Memory is deemed most useful to those who are aged and past prime--and who ironically may lack it. Memory must be promoted before it becomes obsolete.

People are obsessed with knowing what is happening right now and in trying to predict what will happen in the next moment.

We are "dated" when we reference the past. Worse, we are identified as living in the past, which is deemed pathological and pathetic. Looking forward is heroic and brave...looking backwards is a good way to get whiplash.

History was once promoted as a prescription for improvement. Many of us believed that by knowing the past we could avoid repeating it. This wisdom has been trumped by the theory of eternal repetition. We know that we must repeat the past in variation because beneath our sophistication, we are animals that must repeat ourselves in order to live--and die.

Meanwhile, we move toward the future, not walking briskly, or steadily, or in a straight line. Rather we dance in great circles, spinning in a direction not always apparent, beguiled by the music in our minds.

Luckily, there are many good things to remember...college is one.

It may not reflect any other experience we ever have, but this is not a bad thing. If each of us can experience an exception to the realities of living, then why would we ever deprive ourselves of this for several years on the cusp of turning adult?

I recently showed my wife and teenage daughter the campus of my alma mater on our way home from a vacation. It was my first time back since I graduated more than thirty years ago. I could not believe how many new buildings there were and how new the older buildings appeared. I always remembered my dorms as having dark facades, but they looked scrubbed and new.

We drove around the campus, on the sidewalks as well as the campus maintenance roads--they looked alike. We must have been the only ones on the premises on the second day in August. It had rained profusely in the area that afternoon. Steam lifted from the pavements and the grass and drifted among the trees. The light was neutral, pure, and honest, and the colors expressed themselves in depth.

It is a small place but the long absence increased the distance. There were many new buildings, and I struggled to remember what many of the old ones were for. The building where I had received my mail had become a library. So much for memory!

But the power of memory is borne out by the fact that I am writing an essay about this obscure homecoming. Essay writing is one experience I remember most about my liberal arts education. I wrote many essays for four years, then entered a world in which essays were not much valued anymore. Still I am grateful for the legacy. It is useful and enjoyable to be able to improvise thoughts, to find their unseen relationships, and inherent structure. I do it whenever I can. Memory sustains life, but so does practice.