| There is no question of doing “exercises” to
explore memory.
We can at least learn to :
- Know our background better. Enjoy
exploring it if that is pleasant.
- Learn to handle
it better if possible.
Being more familiar with our background
is constantly rediscovering:
- Family roots:
- Parents and grandparents,
the land where we grew up, relationships between
parents and children, sisters and brothers, childhood
friendships and the loves and crises of adolescence.
Personal life history:
 School
and later studies, long or short, success or problems
in our working life, sometimes leading to the distress
of unemployment and in family life with its successes
and failures, good and bad health that make life
pleasant, painful or anxious, the many experiences
of life, tastes and interests, travel, friendships
and loves.
- Contemporary events:
- Everyone has lived through
historical events that have marked us more or less
strongly, according to our degree of involvement
: war, prison camps or the occupation, the wars
in Indochina and Algeria, the construction of Europe,
the discovery of techniques providing information
for all, television, mobile phones, computers,
space exploration, more local events like the great
storm of December 1999 or the tragedy of beaches
polluted by oil spills …
Personal roots, events in our lives,
the global environment all constitute the background to
the landscape where our memory now finds its material.
| Using our memory involves
finding the image we are seeking in that incredible
jumble of “traces”. Every recollection
saved from this adventure is a virtual miracle. |
To retrieve is to handle
better
If there is a place that is more
painful, the memory will take longer to surface or it will
simply refuse to emerge. It is not that our memory is at
fault It is suffering and is letting us know by its reluctance
to deliver the memories we are seeking. Listening to ourselves,
letting our memory recall the hidden parts of ourselves,
then considering these recollections that are part of us,
helping us explain a lot of our behaviour, is a good way
of giving the memory the air it needs and the flexibility
we sometimes lack: the memory is too distant and hard to
reach. Take your time, explore your past in the vast landscape
of your personality, what makes yours different from all
other lives in all other times. You are the only one to
have lived that life – it is yours. Cherish it. It
is your memory.
Now, set out to explore
your memory !
| Take a photo album dating
from any time in your life. Sit down and leaf through
it slowly. Let the memories emerge as the pages
turn. Recall people’s names, the events they
call to mind. Find dates if you can. Let the memories
and emotions surface slowly. Take the time to listen
to what your memory is presenting. Give it time
to savour recollections. You will probably feel
a good deal of emotion. You were unaware that all
this was inside you. It was in the background and
you had not realised its presence and its importance.
Or again:
Sit in your favourite
armchair. As Montaigne said, you are going
to grant your thoughts an audience. Set
out from a moment in your life, one which comes
spontaneously to mind. Then let your thoughts
flow without holding them back. They will guide
you and lead you to memories that are more
or less clear, and sometimes to memories you
don’t care for. Airing these memories
is a way of allowing them to exist, but not
to have a negative effect on us.
Or again:
Choose any way you
like to commune with yourself, your life, your
past and the multitude of people and events
that make up your personality. Learn how to
handle the memories that load you down and
that you would sometimes like to erase. They
are there, so it is better to learn to live
with them rather than to repress them, and
let them live inside you. Your past is your
best friend. Cherish it and it will return
the compliment.
|
In one way or another you
ventilate your memory. You enable the present to accord
with the past which is the grounding of the present.
You will avoid a lot of upsets, those dizzy moments,
the memory lapses we complain of and put down to age.
It is not the memory that is giving way; it is just that
our footing in the present is not sure enough. Restoring
contact with the past is the best way of living in the
present.
This explains the need, with
advancing age, to recall the past as it becomes more
distant, while still providing a sure footing for us
in the present.
People often take a sheet of paper
and start writing. They are leaving a record for those
who follow, one which would disappear if they had not felt
the desire to set down their memories. And page after page,
these images retrieved from the past become life stories.
The memory completes its work. It has retained and now
passes on.
|
