Memories

Life is made out of memories. Life, in itself, is a memory. After all, there will be nothing left but memories. Yet, what purpose does a life full of memories serve? We live each day to create memories, even if we do not intend to. We store these fragments of daily life in the abyss of our minds, conscientiously but often subconsciously. They are intangible prospects either dwelling in the depths of our minds, or hammering at the surface as a friendly reminder of perhaps a particularly embarrassing moment in our lives. However, have we never found it enigmatic to fathom the true purpose of memories? Surely they are not bits and pieces of unwanted information that inundate us just for the sake of it. Memories have always been there; they cannot be seen, but they can be felt. We do not choose to remember, we remember because we can and are involuntarily bounded to the natural occurrence of it. It can bring us great ecstasy with the remembrance of joyful times, just like the gleeful childhood of ours when we scampered about, satisfied greatly by the simple pleasures of life like receiving a colourfully wrapped sweet. Or it can impale us with the excruciating scars of the past, just like the time when our world seemed to come crashing down and we learnt about the cruelty of reality when our blood, sweat and tears were met with demoralising failure. Our hopes were snatched from us that day, along with our naivety. Whichever the memory, as long as it is held close to our hearts since that fateful day, as long as it impacts us enough to be inevitably engraved into our minds, it sticks to us, and it sticks for life. Why then, do we put ourselves headlong into the incessant agony of the unpleasant, when we can selectively safeguard the heart-warming recollections that we have? The thing is, we cannot help but do so. We have to realise that both elation and bitterness come hand in hand; one does not simply feel happy without first understanding and grasping the emotion of sorrow. We will never appreciate comfort if we have never understood pain. This is how we learn from experience, because no one has ever taught us how to feel happy before. We know we are delighted when we do not feel the same despair from previous plights, while our memories serve as generous reminders in this gamut of emotions. Memories themselves are neutral but our perception of them is not. Let us not acquiesce to them and the feelings that follow, but instead comprehend their existence and wholeheartedly accept them. After all, memories exist for multitudes of reasons. Perhaps the most salient one is that our memory defines us and who we are as an individual. Our memory is in fact, our identity.