The simplicity of sitting in a coffee shop one average afternoon, drinking a frilly drink and eating a croissant, may as easily be forgotten a week later.
The views of a stunning sunset over the horizon of a parking lot as people flood out of Target may not be unimaginable minutes later when the colors and clouds shift.
A conversation with a friend about everything going on in your life may be like whispers of wind as soon as new events occur.
How can we be required to memorize and learn hundreds of thousands of new information when every day, everyone is having experiences and encounters that may not be remembered when telling a parent about their recent activities?
I have always thought of myself as someone with quite a vivid memory: remembering brief interactions with a random person in second grade that stings with embarrassment even years after when no one else has a sliver of thought about it. But, on certain topics such as birthdays, equations, and instructions, it is easy enough to ensure that the information has dissolved from my brain as quickly as it was placed there. With the contradictory experiences, I obviously do not have a vivid memory.
It seems as though people remember different things for different reasons. Some memories pass by on a large flat screen with intense camera angles and sounds, while others merely pass on a tiny, scratchy box TV with views as if a five-year-old held the camera almost completely distracted by something else entirely. Some of the viewpoints may be explainable by the age, or situation the memory is drawn from, simply fitting it more adequately. Some may just be justified by the importance or impact it leaves today.
My mind is a camera, but I would think of it as a traditional, rectangle, with a lens that opens like eyelids with a little musical squeak as the on button is pressed. It takes clear pictures naturally but can be augmented to create a disarrayed view if not held still. The SD card holds various moments and memories, all from the view of myself, but the smaller me, full of excitement and enthusiasm. As I go about my day, pictures are constantly taken, but only a few make it out to be clear because of how much is going on. People, words, colors, sounds, and thoughts, are all around me, encompassing every moment. Trying to capture it all is impossible. Some of the photos have motions and sounds attached, but what is recalled is a single snapshot, frozen in time.
Obviously, many of the clips become decayed after time, holding a blurred face, letter, or sound. But even in the disoriented face, each holds importance unique to itself. Some I believe are truly just imagination more than a true picture; animation rather than live-action in other words.
Why does so much depend on memory, when it is so easy to alter and imagine things yet rely on it for jobs, school, etc? For what it’s worth, it seems as if my memory is almost sacred, and no matter what happens or what it recognizes, it can not be changed and is completely and uniquely my own.
