Hold Onto Your Memories : Delights of the Ordinary No. 31
And, isn’t it a mesmeric mystery that time coolly moves ‘one-tick-after-another-tock’ that it never obeys our command.
Hi, I am Anugrah. I write Delights of the Ordinary for us who are trapped in the world of hustle culture but are quiet at heart with an itching creative bone. This newsletter intersects culture, art and our practical 9-5 job space. If you know even one person who will benefit from reading Delights of the Ordinary, feel free to share so they can subscribe.
“Childhood memories are sometimes covered and obscured beneath the things that come later, like childhood toys forgotten at the bottom of a crammed adult closet, but they are never lost for good.”
- Neil Gaiman
Isn’t it wonderful since many years have gone by and perhaps we all have grown up into adults? Some of you must have grown much older; while some of you are still young; though not very young. Maybe somewhere in between!
And, isn’t it a mesmeric mystery that time coolly moves ‘one-tick-after-another-tock’ that it never obeys our command. It never stops! Therefore, in our time bracket of growing older, we have so much to live by, so much to do and so many memories to store within us. So much so, that these memories carve us. Assembling in us deep territories, in some sort of detailed order, inside and out.
The Nostalgia :
Towards the brighter section of my memory trunk, I have these sepia-toned moments etched in my brain, when the sun used to be scarlet and mountains surrounded our homes.
When superheated summer holidays were marked with this lone high aim to loiter around in gangs and on finding a sparkling odd-looking pebble on the sideway, gasping with a big ‘Aaahhhaa’ or cracking some shoddy joke which was to be understood only if you had a heart of a child; then to giggle and laugh so silly that we ended up snorting until our stomachs hurt. Childhood has such creative passions that every shade is a vibrant primary colour from the colour wheel.
The thick smell of fish curry and the whiff of ‘when-rain-meets-the-earth’ scent, the sombre deliciousness of childhood sunsets, cycling carefree under the cloudy sky, the untried paths and bursting waves. The Christmas parties, winter dresses to summer uniforms all lay inside of us. Deeply somewhere staying in forever. These memories are such nostalgic spaces where the facts and our emotions are glued and weaved into each other. You can’t and will not want to rip them apart.
Like Virginia Woolf in her book titled Orlando, says,
“Memory is the seamstress, and a capricious one at that. Memory runs her needle in and out, up and down, hither and thither. We know not what comes next, or what follows after.”
Time is ever-changing, moving and evolving. Now in our modern times, the old grandfather’s three-hand clock is modified to the digital one, silently moving on our phone screens!
Nostalgia leaves us somewhere unknown. Where we want to return but still can’t. Because even if you turn around towards them, the life’s verities- the lanes, that ancient grocery shop, the old bench at the corner, the school playground, and the old tarmac roads on which our present reality was made, they all remain - but the old atmosphere and its vibe which was a part of our childhood has now faded away. People around that place have changed. The generation has changed. Hence the old things which always felt like home now suddenly feel familiarly new.
What is Memory, Precisely?
According to a definition by the Centre for Neuroimaging in London, “memory is the process of taking in information from the world around us, processing it, storing it and later recalling that information, sometimes many years later.”
In our prevalent culture, where we have stopped thinking about the vastitude of life we also see memory as “some kind of physical thing that is stored in the brain; a subjective, personal experience that we can recall at will.” But with advancements in the scientific study of memory as a subject, it is now not seen as a fixed thing reserved in the brain but is more of a chemical process between neurons, which is not static and the vast amount of memory we process day to day is integrated into our cognition.
The Becoming of Our Memories
All the old days that lay inside us are sort of the brick-and-mortar of our neuron system. That is what makes us now!
Harvard Medical School says, “In many ways, our memories shape who we are. They make up our internal biographies—the stories we tell ourselves about what we've done with our lives. They tell us who we're connected to, who we've touched during our lives, and who has touched us. In short, our memories are crucial to the essence of who we are as human beings.”
Unaware you are caught in the moment of remembering the ordinary recollection of how your mother used to or still holds her ladle and how your father shaved each morning. The factual information and your emotions - the tangible weave with the intangible.
A journal published in the National Library of Medicine correlates,
We are remarkably made of memories and it is somewhat difficult to which one to pull out from which shelf of our brain. Because it is not just about voluntarily recalling an incident. Memories have survived inside of us, living each juncture with us, like “significant moments in the flow of our lives would be like rocks placed in a stream: which accrued the debris of memory, rich in sight, smell, taste, and sound. No snapshot can do what the attractive mnemonic impediment can…” and with age, they are not that neatly arranged anymore. They are stacks in our brains and sometimes it is difficult to bring out the name of the schoolmate yet still remember her soft face!
Get into the habit of looking for the silver lining of the cloud and when you have found it, continue to look at it, rather than at the laden gr[e]y in the middle.
- Mrs. Charles Cowman
The Ordinaries of Our Memory
It is not that childhood is a masterpiece of delightful memories. The worst of what sabotaged our hearts lingers too. The acute adolescence must have been interpreted by silent heartbreaks to be escorted by the melancholy of the Backstreet Boys. Or may be much more difficult- you had massive failures and shame and bullying. But somehow, you lived through those tragic alleys. We know those difficult rememberings are deliberately latched in some attic of our brain but they were also the integral ones to make us who we are. In the end, memories are us. The very good and the very bad of us.
“Thus, the most ordinary movement in the world, such as sitting down at a table and pulling the inkstand towards one, may agitate a thousand odd, disconnected fragments, now bright, now dim, hanging and bobbing and dipping and flaunting…” (-Virginia Woolf)
We can do a lot biologically to keep our cognitive brain up and running like learning a new language, exercising and cutting down a whole lot of junk food. But what we can do to keep our mental health sane is to continuously make redemptive spaces and grab every opportunity to live into the damp air, the faded mist, the similar aroma, the colloquial laughter and sipping your coffee and I writing you letters!
Among the goodness of whatever the heavens have given us, time is a marvellous thing because it never judges you based on how you have lived. It just moves. Even if you lived your life slowly or at a roller-coster-sped-rate it will move no more fast and no more slow. And that is wonderful. Almost sacred! Hence, as much as it is, make memories yours and live them each day.
Then, whenever you miss your past remember that the present and the awaiting future will soon turn old so hold onto many moments to preserve them as your memories. The deliverance is when you miss your old just close your eyes and visit and revisit that time. They are yours. If life will be good or bad we can’t say but what we know is all will be remembered. And with every set of memories, you will either make a soothing garden or a thorny one.
Let’s be creative!
"And now that you don't have to be perfect, you can be good."
- John Steinbeck, East of Eden
To let you see the internet without the mind-numbing-doom-scrolling dynamism, here are a few links that are worth our attention:
To Watch: Since we are speaking about memories, here is a Ted Ed video by Catharine Young about how our brain is such an incredible thing yet we lose our memories as we age.
To Joy Scroll: If you have lived through the 90’s era then you would be nostalgic about the things you grew up with. Here are some 30-odd photos which only ’90s kids can understand. (Click Here)
To Cook: I am not into baking these days, just ordinary cooking makes my stomach full, but came across this recipe named ‘Cookies of Joy.’ The recipe was created by a 12th-century nun and in her words these cookies, “create a happy mind and puts joy in the human disposition.” Click here for the recipe with a chunk of history to it.
To End: Thief of Time by Terry Pratchett
The universe is, instant by instant, recreated anew
Therefore there is in truth no past, only a memory of the past.
Blink your eyes, and the world you see next did not exist when you closed them.
Therefore, the only appropriate state of the mind is surprise.
The only appropriate state of the heart is joy.
The sky you see now, you have never seen before.
The perfect moment is now.
Be glad of it.
Wishing you the largest heaps of love and hugs, and a lot of food coma lazy weekend. See you on the other side and thanks for reading.
- Anugrah
Delights of the Ordinary started somewhere in April of twenty-twenty-three with just two readers and now has a readership of 100+ of you. I am highly grateful for the time and room that you give me in your heart.
Delights of the Ordinary currently is a free publication. Yet it takes me many hours of effort to write and curate it. I may need lots of coffee to keep me going. You can :)
Stumbled on my publication? Explore all my previous editions here. And in case you don’t wish to spend time browsing then complement this post with Fomo, Jomo, Wagmi And Why We Need Them in Our Lives, We are Trying to Eliminate Complications, Not Add to Them or read about The Art of Walking.
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