Looking Back our past

Looking Back our past

You live life looking forward, you understand life looking backward. – Soren Kierkegaard

If only God gifted the white clad politician, successful businessman and the do-gooder social worker with long term memory. We may have really funny stories to hear.

Memory is not only our past. It is truly our future too. To know who you are as a person, you need to have some idea of who you have been. And, for better or worse, your remembered life story is a pretty good guide to what you will do tomorrow. Lose your memory and you lose a basic connection with who you are. When you ask people about their memories, they often talk as though they were material possessions, enduring representations of the past to be carefully guarded and deeply cherished. This is a bit like the filed away data in a computer, which can be rewound and played when desired.

However this may be a very simplistic way of understanding your memories of your past life. A computer that files data away is hardly changed by the data it stores unless it is specifically meant to achieve that end. But every human is the net result of what was seen, felt, heard, smelt, tasted, experienced and finally stored in mind. Every little thing changes you, in a way that may be minute of huge. So what you are, however glorified it be, is what you were.

Those with a lot to hide, all wear masks that hide unsavoury pasts. This mask is usually thicker for those who are on high perches now, the higher the thicker. They prefer to meet new people, but conveniently forget old acquaintances. Their life story starts only from the day, they got into this new role. The have scant memory of days when things were not so hunky dory.

Every dark element in society has a sad story to tell, of sorrow, poverty, hunger, illness, loss of dear ones. He is forthcoming with these stories to anyone who has an ear to hear. His memory is the sharpest and his recollection of every nuance of his life is crystal clear. It is just a wonder of nature that the moment he achieves success, his memory takes a dive to the deepest points and his stories always hover around now and yesterday.

It will do a world of good to remember, so that you don’t forget the bus, you ought to catch. It may serve you well to take a peek backward when I achieve something also when I feel bloated. It is from here that I came, wherever it leads me tomorrow.