Processing memories from distant years ago, 30, 40, 50 years or more. Recently I shared a memory with my son Matt about the time when he and his brother tried to carve up an evergreen tree in the backyard of our Colorado house, circa 1995. He could not remember this. There are no pictures or videos or contemporaneous written descriptions. The event now resides only in my mind. One of the millions of sights that I have seen and sounds that I have heard, and actions, interactions that I have had over the years, and which remain today only as imperfect memories. Childhood playground activities and streetball games, 30 years of pickup basketball, eight thousand consecutive runs, daily home meals, restaurant meals, work commutes, endless work-related meetings, car travel trips, shopping trips, rainstorms, snowstorms, conversations with neighbors, books I have read. Endless, often repetitive, and occasionally memorable.
When we organize a closet, clean a room, wash a car, rake leaves, or repair a leaking faucet, we put energy back into the system and temporarily reduce the natural progression of entropies that surround our life. We are forestalling the degradation that eventually overcomes our best efforts. Ninety nine percent of the events in our lives, and in the lives of others, leave no permanent trace. I suppose that if I had kept a detailed daily journal of my life, it could serve to preserve many of these, much as a memoir or historical record could.
Within our current society there are some that commit to leaving a more complete daily digital trail of life’s breadcrumbs. And looking forward, there are AI related research projects that will (someday) allow us to map our very consciousness onto a permanent record of sorts. Mind uploading – Wikipedia
If there is no record or lasting consequence for much of our experiential history, along with the resources it took to construct these moments, then to what purpose did these events exist? What if half of them never happened, would the world we live in now be changed in any measurable way? Sliding doors in our lives can bend our futures. Forks squarely in the road. Decisions made about education, marriage, careers; we can recall many of these. What college did I choose and what field of study did I pursue? How many catastrophes did I narrowly avoid, and never knew? Opportunities missed, risks not taken, the outcomes are unknowable.
With the passage of time most of these decisions become irrelevant except for a few that leave a sense of accomplishment, or good fortune, catastrophe, and sometimes regret. Who have I never met? Who have I met by luck or circumstance and changed the arc of my life?? I don’t believe in divine intervention, though I have always been intrigued by the concepts of fate and destiny. There are so many independent and interdependent events that shape our life story that have a random but meaningful impact on us, if not the wider world. What about those times and places and actions that are only known with certainty by two of us? Are those more real? I believe that they are, though still no traces exist for others to examine. Some secrets are kept close to the heart….
