Remembering

Dear jo,

When is the practice of “being present” actually functioning as an escape from the past, as shelter from painful memories, as avoidance of a legacy of hurt and grief? All that studying of buddhism, all that meditation practice, all that living mindfully and teaching others how to cultivate presence—how does it serve me now as I endeavor to illuminate the trails I’ve travelled, the life I’ve lived, that I’ve survived?

Memory is famously erroneous—objectively speaking, that is. But as it lives inside of us, inside of me, it is a kind of truth, a subjectivity that is precious and intimately personal. When we talk of memories, of course we almost always refer to the narrative aspects, the images of past situations, our cognitive and emotional interpretations of what we’ve been through and the people that were there. And of course, as we’re living growing changing beings, our memories are likewise living growing changing parts of us—just another way that the past has not passed, it lives and breathes the present inside of us. 

I’m interested in cognitive and narrative memories, and in connecting and reconnecting with my own, partly because its long seemed like I’ve had a terrible memory. I try not to characterize it as such anymore, too judgemental. But there have been just countless times when others seem to remember more details or more clearly than I, and there’s wide swaths of my childhood that I scantily recall. 

But perhaps more than narrative memory, I’m interested in what’s called “implicit memory.” In psychotherapy, this might be understood as the memories that our bodies hold, that are woven into our nervous system. My body remembers what it was like to make it through certain difficult experiences in the past, and it remembers by getting nervous in the present, or feeling irritable in current situations, or being generally tense in everyday life. Implicit memories may have no narrative aspects, they may only be noted as physical sensations and emotional tendencies, divorced of any conscious recall for the events that originally conditioned us to react or feel that way. Or we might very well remember what happened to us, and understand it, and have even made a kind of peace with it, but still experience the associated emotional and physiological memories as alive and real right now. These memories that live and grow and play and fret and churn inside of me.

I’d like to use this space as a place to give special treatment to some of my narrative and implicit memories, to bring a wholeheartedness to them as being essential parts of me. Not in a limiting sense of narrow identification with them, but with a warm acknowledgement that I actually can’t live without them, nor do I want to. Even this activity of journaling—I remember in middle school my mom required me to keep a journal, like a kind of chore to be done regularly. I don’t remember much about it, and it seems to me that it didn’t have much sustainability, but what with all the biological building that was happening inside as a child, I stand now upon this structure and live inside this abode whose foundation consists of childhood experiences, those remembered and forgotten. I may reside in mostly the top floors now—marriage, baroque fugue, treatment protocols—but I want to also change a few light bulbs on the lower levels, spruce up the porch and have repose in the shade.

My old boss at the Naval Hospital implored me numerous times that I should write a memoir. This journal blog will likely be as close as that gets