I’m struck these days by the notion that in our memories we become what we remember and not what we forget. Memory is so notoriously unreliable, and yet it’s all we have at times. We recall with great certainty and clarity a moment from the past, for instance. And yet, in fact, that impression may not be what had actually occurred. Memory is always at best just that—an “impression,” an imprint, and like a fading photograph, a mere approximation of what once was.
I remember with great certitude, for instance, the floral pattern of our living room linoleum when I was a child. Great boisterous roses of mostly pink pastel shades, they were. My siblings, however, may recall other patterns on the flooring entirely, and each of those may differ from each other again. We have multiple impressions, then, each a bona fide recollection in the memory of the beholder. So which is real? Which an authentic recall? Which, ultimately, true?
Perhaps they all are, to each of us in turn, or perhaps, in fact, none is quite accurate. Yet the memory is no less “real” for each of us.
If indeed, our pasts become what we remember and not what we forget, then, the same may be so of our younger (or even more recent) selves. If we recall ourselves at any earlier time in our lives to have been more pleasant, considerable, patient, diligent, tactful—or less so—that is what we “were” in the past as we recall it, the “me” that we remember. It is what we have “become,” in a sense, to ourselves at least. How close that may actually be to the reality of our earlier selves we need leave to others to affirm. It would be comforting if what we have become in our memories is not too far from the way we truly were.
