Riding back from gym the other day I got caught up in a radio documentary about memory. One story in particular had me sitting in the car well past the point I had arrived home. As the temperature climbed to sauna-like levels I ignored the discomfort rapt with attention at the unfolding story of Clive, a man who has suffered from a particular form of amnesia for over twenty years. The narrator and Clive himself described in almost agonizing terms what it was like to forget who you were and what you were doing from one minute to the next.
It seems this rare but not unknown malady affects people in different ways. Some cannot remember people they meet, as is the case with one woman who could not remember the psychiatrist that was treating her and introduced herself every day as if she had never met him before. In Clive’s case the only constant appears to be the great love he has for his wife—although he cannot remember the last time he saw or spoke to her even if it were just a few minutes in the past.
It reminded me of a wonderful little book written by an MIT professor who wanted to find a way to help his scientifically challenged students better understand Einstein’s theories. In Einstein’s Dreams, set in the Swiss village where Einstein served as a patent clerk during his seminal years, Professor Alan Lightman explores alternate universes where time and space take on different dimensions. In one story people live without a sense of the past, while in another they have only the present—no future or past. It is a fascinating premise and it does what it sets out to do beautifully. But it is also a bit horrifying, at least it was to me.
I admit there are times I wish I could forget some of my past—selectively mind you, and there are moments, snapshots if you will, that I wish were more vivid. I am content to live in the now; I have no desire to know the future and will cheerfully leave the past to its own devices. Sometimes it intrudes. Often when I least expect. A sight or smell like Proust’s Madeleines triggers a meandering amble down a path that did not exist a moment before. When these memories occur, I am inclined to follow them wherever they lead out of curiosity but I have learned not to be enslaved to the emotions they may rekindle. Standing apart I often learn something about myself or others, as if I have fresh eyes with which to observe.
When we are in the moment, it is sometimes difficult to see and hear objectively. Memories freed of subjective bias can offer us insight into a different level of truth and understanding than we might otherwise have gained. It is a bit like that wonderful literary conceit where we read a story from the perspective of several different participants. A skillful author can lead us to the Aha moments without tipping us off in advance. So too, memories can reveal what we only observed with un-conscious awareness.
Dreams, it is said, are another way we reveal truths to ourselves. Whoever observed this apparently had a different dream life than mine. Mine are a pendulum swinging between metaphor and absurdity for the most part. But ever so rarely, something is revealed to me as a truth that my conscious mind has been unwilling or unable to see. I cannot will these to visit me, they are guided by a power well beyond my abilities.
A few times over the course of my life, I have remembered things I cannot possibly know. What I mean by that is that I have a vivid recollection of someone or something that I have never met or never experienced. It is disconcerting when what we think of as reality suddenly has fuzzy edges and the line between our reality and our imagination becomes blurred. There is likely a scientific explanation for this, but my own sense is that we have caught a glimpse of a different reality. It is as if I have caught a flickering image of something just around the corner and out of my direct line of sight.
It is experiences like these that make me wary of orthodoxy. Whenever things seem to be too conveniently absolute I wonder. Perhaps I am simply a character in my own version of Einstein’s Dreams. The thought passes quickly—we aren’t built to live with that inherent contradiction but still, I wonder where my own personal timeline begins or ends. Perhaps you do too?