Memories

Memories are us. We are comprised of so many memories that we might as well be one big collage of photographs. Memories haunt; memories smile; memories move us both forward and back. And it's funny, thinking about them all.

Today, my sister and I took two pictures with our grandmothers because we had both chipped in to buy them both "I Love Grandma" frames. I am sure that both of them will put it in their living rooms for all to see. And all we see that moment in time that we took that picture and their minds will craft a story behind that very moment with what they see. The picture holds so much and yet there are so many missing elements to it that only we know about.

The viewer wouldn't know about all of the other pictures we took that were not worthy of the frame. They wouldn't know our thought process behind the poses we took and with our decision to even take the decision in the first place. The lie we told to keep it a surprise for the both of them. The fact that it was even a Christmas present in the first place.

Photographs are the essence of memory, being as they preserve the moment forever to look back at later. Often, they contain so many other memories besides the one in that one photograph.So it's certainly interesting.


Of course, it's not just about photographs. Memories extend far beyond that. As I said, memories are who we are and they dictate everything that we do. That's a pretty powerful thing for sure.

And yet they're so unreliable. It's the reason law enforcement find eyewitness testimony so unreliable  Memories can be manufactured, altered, evaporated. They taint everything and skew all of the information we take in; if they had so much sway, one would think they'd be mostly accurate and yet they aren't.

Sometime they may not be what we think they are. Memories might not even be reality at all because our brain has forgotten too much and filled in the blanks. Each person remembers things differently and it's not until that moment when the family members reminisce that it really hits us.

Sometimes, we block out memories and sometimes we cling to them. And yet the ones we want to cling to fade the most and the ones we want to forget linger far too long. And how strange is that? Maybe that's why it's the unpleasant memories that make us who were are then; I don't know. It's only the amnesiacs that have them all go and even then a lot of them often come back to haunt us.

In essence, memories are only the brain's way of storing information to get us through the day and the brain is yet another faulty organ inside of us prone to mistakes. And yet, to us, they are so much more. What will I think years later when I lok at that picture? How will I feel? Will my memories be pretty unreliable too? We are our memories and we will be our future memories. I can't get over that because it's just so odd.