Memory

Memory plays such a subtle and yet predominant role in my life. In fact it is all what I seem to have in order to speak of myself. And yet, how much can I trust memory? Memory, supposedly is a impression of the past, a snap-shot, which works as a land-mark, a point de repère, in time. Assuming it does what it claims: why do I so much need the past and its memory? If memory works like a thread in the labyrinth of time, there would be no going back anyway. But really how much can I rely on memory? As far as I can tell, it has nothing to do with the past, it is born now and dies now, nothing guarantees it has come from this place called "the past". Is memory not just spontaneous? Isn't it a product of the present rather than the past? Is it not imagination in fact?

Memory, it seems, is merely a story about what cannot be seen, an impression on the world of things marking them with stigmas of what they should have been, or should be. What would this world be without memory? How many wars would cease together with it? How much sorrow, suffering, habits and how much spontaneity, trust and opportunities would rise? What would I be without memory? Unborn, eternal, without memory I would not relate to the other, because in the present moment there are no relationships. Relationships cannot live outside of time, cannot survive without memory, because the other then would always remain a stranger, fresh and new.

Memory in fact is central to the answer to "who am I" a question which lies beneath all of our actions, bred by a continuous flow of memory. Without memory, there would be no "who" at all indeed, because the "who" cannot exist alone, it needs to relate.

No who, no when, no how nor why.