Memories are our reality.

 Memories are our reality.

Finally, I have a chance to write about memory. In my view, it is so very important to understand that we live, not in reality, but in memory. A flawed memory it is. By the time you are reading these words, they are your memory and mine as well. There is no such thing as “present” and we may sense reality differently from each other. Your eyes are looking at letters, written on “newsprint” typed on my computer, printed in Lethbridge and the light brings it to your eyes. The eyes convert what you see to tiny electric stimulations traveling to your brain, which converts the symbols to ideas and stores it in, you’ve guessed, memory.

By the time you perceive something, it is gone from the now to the past and what passed no longer exists. I think about what happened and draw it from memory, which is the way I remember it. Another person who witnessed the same event will remember it at least a bit differently.

Modern courts are cognizant of this well-proven fact and take it into consideration when using witness testimonies. Another problem is how we view reality. We view our leaders or our religions opposite to each other. Often our brains tend to create a picture more the way we want to see things than the way things are. We call it beliefs. Beliefs are just as real to us as parts of our bodies. You can hardly just remove a belief only because you want to.

The best we can do is educate ourselves and learn as much as we can about all the opposing views and how to think in a critical way. Some say that we should teach our young not what to think, but how to think. Not long ago it was most obvious to all people that the world was flat and took a lot of effort to convince ourselves that it is actually round. There is still a “Flat Earth Society” who maintains that pictures from space showing a round world are a “hoax” or “fake news.”

Beliefs are often formed around emotions. We get sayings such as “beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” When did I form my feeling of what is beautiful and what is not? I don’t remember, but I do know that it was influenced by others, possibly my parents, and shaped by all the people around me. When I concluded that something is beautiful, it became my nature, and I began to identify myself around it. Now if someone said, your girlfriend or your house is ugly, I will feel like fighting them and calling them liars.

One emotion that powerfully forms our beliefs is fear. We are naturally scared of the unknown future and try to predict what may happen. We want to take pre-emptive action to avoid imagined future disasters. We always forget that the future is not here and unexpected turns will happen. There is no way to avoid all possible pitfalls.

Humans always try to shape other humans’ behaviour by introducing fears of the future and blaming each other. You see it clearly when someone is selling you security systems, safer cars, insurance, and countless other products. You get bombarded by “political messages” and they coax you to make religious affiliations to avoid eternal damnation. Some may be true, but most are motivated by someone's economic considerations.

Am I telling you all of this to make you careless about the future? Do I try to convince you not to trust your memories and what you have learned? I hope not. I am advocating to enjoy life as it is and not become a fanatic of any cause. I am recommending going through life following the mantra, “be not afraid.”

When I write, I always keep a candle or an oil lamp burning at my sight. It reminds me that there is something greater than all of what I remember and all of what I can imagine. It counts my heartbeats, grows my hair or nails and makes pictures in my brain out of the light reflecting into my eye. It converts air vibrations into sounds and delights me with beauty when I see things in proportion and my brain just loves what is harmonious. I don’t know what it is, yet it gives me a life that I enjoy and wish to protect.

Our forefathers' thousands of years ago imagined that the reality they lived in, the world, was not all there is. They tried to explain it with religions, philosophies, right to now when we use science. Our science, as good as it is, has no idea how reality relates to what the brain thinks it is. I live in a world recreated in my brain by tiny electric stimulus hopping from neuron to neuron millions of times a second. That’s the reality for me.  

I look around me and I see mountains, trees, old buildings and the most wonderful community of people one can imagine. I talk with some of those beautiful people and realize that it's not the same for many of them. My old friend Mrs. Sonia, (not her real name) says, I am surviving, thanks. She has a sad turn of events influencing her life. She doesn’t see heaven but sees hell. She wishes things were as they were at other times. It is so sad. I could count her blessings, but she will not listen. She could live in heaven, but she will not.

I pray for the sad and blind people, including myself. All they need to do is change their story a tiny bit and be happy. But that’s in memory now as well. Everything is. 

Here is a link to my blog: https://thesimpleravenspost.blogspot.ca/  Feel free to check other articles and comment.