I have been watching the Olympics, but not
with the same interest and attention that I have in the past. I am not sure
why. Someone suggested to me the other day that is probably because of the time
difference. I am not convinced of this. As a child I loved the Olympics. My
first sporting hero was Brendon Foster and this dates back to the 1976 Olympics
at Montreal. I was only four years old at the time. Now when I say he was my
sporting hero, I suspect he was more my mum’s. She loves the Olympics and I
suspect I enjoyed watching with her all those years ago. The images I remember from
1976 are not of the actual events but images repeated over the years. My mum
likes to tell the story of waking me late in the night so I could watch Brendan
Foster’s race, he came third and won bronze in the end. What is strange is that
I do have this felt memory of being woken. It is not so much a visual memory
though, more an emotional one. This though does not surprise me as memory for
me is much more a felt, an emotional experience, rather than a visual one. In
many ways it’s the responses of competitors after the events that stay with me,
not just the competition, I am touched by the joy and the emotion. I am touched by the years of dedication that
these people and those who have supported them have put into their lives. Not
just the winners and medallists, but also those competing. It is inspiring and
these feelings stay with me, stored in my heart and soul. No doubt others
remember differently.
If I have learnt anything in life it is that
people can experience events, remember events, that they were both present at
very differently. There are many reasons for this, but one may well be how
their senses take in the experience, another how they actually remember. Some
people are much more visually minded than others, more spacially aware. I have
noticed over the years how different my brother and myself are. We recall
things very differently and I suspect that this is because we process and thus
remember very differently. We human beings are very diverse creatures indeed.
While my brother and me look alike, we are not very alike.
A Lot of my memories were lost for many years,
but have over time been re-felt and re-experienced. This is never an easy
experience, but it is a rich one in the end. When I say it isn’t always easy, I
am understating things, in truth it can be excruciatingly painful. I have recently re-experienced some memories while visiting an old friend
who was staying in hospital in the North West. Thankfully he has been able to
return home and I hope that his mental condition will continue to heal. During
our conversations he talked an awful lot of our days, when we were students.
Events and people and experiences that just weren’t there for me, they were
gone, seemingly lost, from my mind. Some amusing and wonderful and others less
so. There was an awful lot camaraderie, friendships and the odd romance, that
never ended well. The memories though were not particularly visual though, they
were felt, they were emotional. I re-felt these memories, I re-sensed them,
they were resentments. They keep on coming as the days pass.
As I have said, many
times before, I wish we had a word for re-sensing things that didn’t only have
negative connotations. Resentment means to re-feel, to re-sense something,
sadly we do not have a word for doing so in a positive or even neutral sense.
My memories are mixed experience, aren’t all of memories a mixture of blessings
and curses, just as life is. To quote good old Moses, “I lay before you life,
blessings and curses, therefore choose life”
I wonder how your memories manifest in your life. Maybe you could reflect on past Olympics and where you were in your life and the folk you shared those memories with. How do you remember? What senses come alive? Perhaps talk with those who shared those memories with you, how do they remember? I Bet that they don’t in exactly the same way.
Memory is a mysterious thing. The way I remember my
own life and people I share my life with has changed many times. The changes seem
to coincide with the way I have experienced and understood my own humanity. The
truth is that my life is made up of those lives that went before me, my life is
built on their lives and those that follow me, their life will be built on mine
and my contemporaries. The ancestors who walked before me and those that follow
me are actually a part of me. I find that incredibly humbling.
It fascinates me how these memories take shape and form and often reshape as
time goes by; it amazes me how these memories seemingly re-incarnate as the
days pass. In many ways it is memory that brings the moments I am experiencing
to life, how these ghosts of the past in habit our lives. They follow us like
headlights on our tales.
One thing I have never had a great memory for is
names. I was talking with someone the other day who told me how much he hates
it that some people forget the names of others, he said he thought it was
disrespectful. I told him that am one of those people. I can remember details
of a person’s life, if they have told me it, faces stay with me, even though I
claim I don’t have a visual memory, but I suspect that is more spacial than
facial the deficit I mean. That said for some reason names can easily get lost
somewhere. By the way it is not only the names of people, but places and things
too. The details are there, but not the name. I am told that this is only going
to get worse, I have already seen the signs of what is yet to come. Billy
Collins captured this perfectly in his poem “Forgetfulness” Angela Fowler
recently shared this poem at our poetry night. She loves Billy Collins, as do
many of us. He has the capacity to touch places deep within but in a simple
easily relatable way. Interestingly when I remined of this on Thursday she had
forgotten about it, which we all laughed about together, a beautiful moment of
human connection.
Here is the poem
The name of the author is the first to go
Followed obediently by the title, the plot,
The heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel
Which suddenly becomes one you have never read,
Never even heard of,
As if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor
Decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,
To a little fishing village where there are no phones.
Long ago you kissed the names of the nine Muses goodbye
And watched the quadratic equation pack its bag,
And even now as you memorize the order of the planets,
Something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps,
The address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay.
Whatever it is you are struggling to remember
It is not poised on the tip of your tongue,
Not even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen.
It has floated away down a dark mythological river
Whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall,
Well on your own way to oblivion where you will join those
Who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle.
No wonder you rise in the middle of the night
To look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war.
No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted
Out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.
…Billy Collins captures something beautiful, if a
little painful here, as he usually does.
Memory is a mystery, we all forget things. I keep on forgetting things at the moment, but I know that this grief and how it manifests in my life, how love and loss plays out. Thankfully I am keeping a sense of humour about all this. We have to maintain our sense of humour about such things. That said there are types of memory loss that less funny, tragic really. There is of course Dementia, in its many forms, the cruellest being Alzheimer’s. A disease which attacks the cortex of the brain forming bundles of tangled plaque that inhibit conversation between the neurons; as it takes away a persons identity and history as aspects of their humanity drift away. The longer we live the more likely we are to become one of its victims.
While the Alzheimer’s sufferer forgets, those who loved them never let them go.
Those who shared memories with them hold their love, those feelings are felt in
that deeper place that cannot be destroyed by time. Love is eternal, it is
immortal. Perhaps some of us feel these experiences more deeply, depending on
how we experience life. Sometimes they are so intense that we lock these
memories away. Ghosts though have a habit of haunting you again when you least
expect them to.
This brings to my mind the following verses from Isaiah (49 vv 15-16):
15 Can a woman forget her nursing child,
or show no compassion for the child of her womb?
Even these may forget,
yet I will not forget you.
16 See, I have inscribed you on the palms of my hands;
your walls are continually before me.
These words came to me the other day as I was looking at the callouses on my
hands caused by training at the gym. I then spent a little time looking at the
palms of my hand. I looked at what are called the heart and lifelines and
remembered the love I have known and the love I have shared, with those people
who have made up my life. Such feelings are surely Divine. There are times when
these feelings are too much.
This is beautifully illustrated by Thich Nhat Hahn,
who wrote in “Present moment, wonderful moment”
“If you look deeply into the palm of your hand, you will see your parents and
all generations of your ancestors. All of them are alive in this moment. Each
is present in your body. You are the continuation of each of these people.”
Isn’t he right. All that has been before is a part of who we are.
Life awes me every single day, it humbles me also. The more I learn the less
things make sense. Every day I have a growing sense of how truly ignorant I am.
Nothing makes absolute sense to me. I have no idea why I feel what I feel or
why my mind remembers and forgets things and then suddenly the memory is more
alive than it has ever been. Clever people try to explain these things to me,
but they seem to get it even less I. The sum of the parts they describe do not
even begin to scratch the surface of the whole.
I am grateful to be a part of this incredible mystery that is life itself; that
I get to share with the people I do; that I get to experience the sensations of
these memories coming to life in my body and spirit, enhancing my experience of
life today.
I am grateful to have experienced this the most amazing trip that anyone could
wish to be on. Thank you for being a part of it. What a ride, what a ride…
Please click below to watch a video devotion
based on the material in this "blogspot"
