Memories

I was thinking today about memories, specifically how very much we cherish the good ones. I was inevitably drawn to the immortal, hauntingly beautiful ballad by Barbara Streisand from the movie with Robert Redford in “The Way We Were.”

“Memories,

Light the corners of my mind

Misty watercolor memories

Of the way we were

Scattered pictures,

Of the smiles, we left behind

Smiles we gave to one another

For the way we were…”

I think most memories are like that, filtered through a prism of nostalgia and affection, and it is the good memories that we cherish the most. That first time we fell in love, graduated from high school or college, our first (and maybe only) marriage.

The birth of our kids, entering the strange and mysterious labor force for the first time, the finding and getting a decent job. Then the years roll by like those old black and white movies with the calendar pages flying and floating away and enfolding us, swathing us in a warm cocoon of healthy, loving feelings of the way we were.

Science tells us we all have verbal and visual memories, that the memory is where we store useful information like appointments and assignments and things we need at the grocery store and people’s names. It is an essential “cognitive function” that reminds us of faces, places, and experiences, both good and bad.

Those are the cold hard scientific facts, but for me, memories are always associated with emotional feelings. They could be good memories or bad memories, but they are just as real to me as the day they happened. Consider this, it is a partial verse from one of my own songs:

“And I don’t remember what it was like before, the day before, I first ever…. laid eyes on you….

And all of these swirling, whirling memories come crashing down like unfinished melodies”…

This is what it is like to me, the first time when you meet that certain someone who is meant to be inextricably bound into the fabric of your daily life. You cannot remember what life was like before this person ever came into your life, and you can’t imagine them ever not being there from that point on. It is like they always were there, but they were not.

Because there is certainly a demarcation point in life, there is always a “before” and an “after” but it all becomes blurry and confusing when it comes to meeting or breaking up with your significant other.

However that turns out for you, good or bad, sweet or sad, happy or painful, you will remember it. The memories have become such an integral part of your life it is like they were always there, like your family.

Life is strange, and there are many twists and turns on the road, choices made or not made, or as the poet Robert Frost so eloquently put it:

“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference”

It is a testimony to the human spirit that we always try to make the right choices, even if we fail in the attempt, but this is how memories are fashioned and stored away in our brains.

I know as humans we are all burdened by bad memories too, sad memories, of loved ones dying before their time, of accidents and affairs and divorces and custody battles.

There are the personal medical setbacks and bad business decisions we later always regret, but they are all part of our infinitely complex and wondrous memory system too. Things happen, and we can only try to cope the best we can, and try to remember the good times.

But in the end, I guess it is a measure of a man or a woman’s life, how many good memories we manage to keep and nourish and cherish that makes it all worthwhile, and how we suppress or forget the bad memories, chalking them up to experience so in a way they are important lessons learned too, and never to be forgotten.

Memories are a vital, crucially important part of our daily lives as humans, and as many good ones as we can store up the happier and more fulfilling our lives will be. Memories are an essential component of the human condition.

I think our stored memories are the measure of each of our separate and shared lives, and they are all undoubtedly useful in daily life too.

But it is the special memories that we all cherish that make life worth living.