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.

How Memories Shape Us?

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,

“The mind is not static. Rather, like early cells acquiring mitochondria, it incorporates information from its surroundings, which in turn changes it. The brain, and the memory it uses, is a work in progress; we are not now who we were then.”

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