Memories are us

Memories are strange.

Take this boulder on a beach outside of Helsingør in Denmark. I remember it from when I was a child frequenting this beach, even if I don’t remember much else. Of course, in those days, the beach was all sandy and much much wider. Or at least it was in my memory.

I thought about the mystery of memories the other day with the news that a family friend had passed away. My mother and I shared memories from his life, things we had shared with him, anecdotes that made him, well, him. He got to live a long life. He had integrity. He was funny. He loved theatre and the arts.

And for some reason, what stood out for me was this: what we choose to fill our lives with now, at some point, that’s what our lives will have been. Those are our memories. We literally make them now.

It’s not so very profound, but I have never felt it so viscerally before. Memories are not random, they are made up of what we prioritize for ourselves and those around us.

When we say “make some memories,” what we mean is “live.”