Saved by Keely Adler
What Good Are Our Memories If We Never Share Them?
In my current less-young age, I’ve learned that almost more than anything, stories hold us together. Stories teach us what is important about life, why we are here and how it is best to behave, and that inside us we have access to treasure, in memories and observations, in imagination.
Anne Lamott • Almost Everything: Notes on Hope
It is in the present moment that we begin to know ourselves. Joan Didion, a famous proponent of writing things down, began doing so at age five. She believed that notebooks were one of the best antidotes for a distracted world: “We forget all too soon the things we thought we could never forget. We forget the loves and the betrayals alike, forget w
... See moreRyder Carroll • The Bullet Journal Method
We have become archivists of the self, I thought, curators of a life half-lived. Each countless photograph of a wonder, of dinner, of a view, of our children, of the utter banality of our everyday lives, was not a memento, a way of remembering the things we did, but instead evidence of the poverty of our engagement with the present moment.
M. E. Rothwell • All Hail the Cloud
People are made of stories. Our memories are not the impartial accumulation of every second we’ve lived; they’re the narrative that we assembled out of selected moments. Which is why, even when we’ve experienced the same events as other individuals, we never constructed identical narratives: the criteria used for selecting moments were different f
... See moreTed Chiang • Exhalation: Stories
Does the value of an experience—whether joyful or tragic—depend on the act of sharing it with others? If so, is the meaning of life inherently tied to relationships and community, or can solitude offer a comparable sense of fulfillment and purpose in moments of significance?
Memory is meant to be given. It isn’t held well alone. It is meant to be held in a collective and across generations. Memories that remain exclusive to a particular individual or even community are at risk of becoming false.