Last night Kim and I were going for our evening walk and she challenged me to a memory game. We have known each other and been friends since the 7th grade in a small town in central Illinois (Pawnee). There were only 70 people in our graduating class, and Kim wanted to see if we could remember them all by name. So we took turns coming up with the first and last names of the people that we went to school with twenty six years ago. Along with the people who actually graduated with us, we came up with twenty or so people who were only in our school for a time and then moved away.
Memory is a strange thing. Five minutes after watching a TV show, a movie, hearing a song, having a conversation, reading an article, hearing a lecture or almost anything else, we lose most of the details. We retain a general sense of what we experienced, but we drop most of the finer points into the abyss of lost history. Much of what we think we remember is actually a fusion of memories. We change details to suit the way we want to remember them. We organize memories in abstract and emotional ways.
Nothing is more precious to us than our lives and our memories, and yet we barely hold on to them. We treasure photos and videos of events because without them we would have very little. And yet the photos and videos distort the purity of the actual experience. I remember my fifth birthday because there is a photo of me wearing a red and yellow shirt in front of a cake. What do you remember about Tuesday two weeks ago? How about Wednesday of last week? Yesterday? I spent two hours a day driving to and from CrossPoint for three years, and yet I have barely five minutes of actual detailed memory from all of those hours driving.
Life is a vapor, a mist.
Unless you are Jill Price. She has a condition that keeps her from forgetting anything. Since she was fourteen years old she has remembered everything. Every thought, smell, emotion, date, name, feeling, taste, etc. You can read about her story here: ABC NEWS
When Kim and I were back home from our walk we grabbed the yearbooks off the bookshelf to see how we did. And, I think we actually did pretty well. There were only six people in our class that we didn’t remember. Three of them we should have remembered, and three of them we still didn’t remember even after we saw their photo. That’s strange, too. We both didn’t remember the same people.
In the Bible “remembering” is the same as “doing.” Remembering to be faithful is the same as being faithful. You can’t remember to be faithful and then decide to be unfaithful, that is forgetting. So, if I forget to do something that God wants me to do, I not only don’t have a good excuse … I actually have compounded the problem.
And this, too, reminds us of our need to confess.
May 13th, 2008 at 4:54 pm
What a story, wouldn’t remembering everything be terrible?
My mom has altzheimer’s disease and recently she asked me who the little girl was who used to visit her (it was my daughter, Hope). She also asked my brother recently “how is your mother”?
Memory is who we are - when you start to lose the power of memory you stop being that person whom you once were. It is recalling those things of memory that makes each of us a particular individual and not just a random soul. Which is why we should be thankful that God is like the little girl you mentioned in the post - he always remembers. He remembers his promise to us and acts.
I am amazed that you remembered so many of your classmates. No way I could have done the same thing.