Reality or Memory?
Memory is clearly on my mind this week. Though this is a little bit of a different take on reality and memory.
I already meditate daily, but I read Dan Harris’s 10% Happier recently and ended up highlighting things out of every chapter. If you don’t meditate, it’s like reading a 300-page blog post on one person’s foray into meditation. If you do meditate, he still has a bunch of really interesting thoughts tucked into the pages.
One of them comes on page 77 when Dan is speaking with his uncle. His uncle is in the early stages of Alzheimer’s, and he asks him a question:
“Which is more exciting to you? Reality or memory?” I paused, considered it, and said, “I wish I could say reality, but it’s probably memory.”
Reality, as in the present moment — experiencing something the first time — or memory, as in the recollection of that moment. The winner if you’re trying to live in the present is probably reality. But, like Dan, I also find memory the more precious option. Even if it is unreliable.
If I could really love and drain every last drop out of the here and now, but have no memory of these moments in the future OR maybe not deeply experience each minute but have lovely memories of the overall day in the future, I would probably take more in the future and less in the now. Even if those memories were only partially accurate.
How would you answer?
3 comments
My answer would be memory. Because it is reality + my interpretation & reflection.
I think one of the reasons I became a documentarian in high school was that I wanted to attempt, the way a 17 year old might, to make memory = reality through documentation.
Doesn’t work.
Fascinating thought… I am woefully bad at meditation and quieting my mind, but I really, really want to get better at it. I think for your question, I’d have to say I’d take memories — I feel like in reality you’re never sure what will become a memory, so memories are precious. Even if they are colored with inaccuracies.
I agree with Jess here. Memories all the way.