The Paradox of Memory
A rumination on remembering, forgetting, and letting go of lost data
How can I remember my life if I no longer have proof of my existence? What will happen to my memory if I no longer have evidence of my life?
Until last month, I could count the memories I carried with me: 18k+ pics and 600+ video images from 2009 to the present were accessible in the palm of my hand at any moment. My iPhone is in fact my memory keeper, the photo album and video library of my life.
With a tap-tap, I can revisit my documented past: school programs, milestone moments, and family trips. I can upload sunrises, swimming swans, and summer blooms to my “Nature” album. I can curate my “Selfies” and “Favorites” folders and reference the hundreds of screenshots that are quite literally memory index cards.
(How else can I remember my life if I no longer have proof of my existence?)
I recently visited Apple’s Genius Bar to fix a mysterious software problem. Before I handed over my digital suitcase of memories, I upgraded my iCloud storage to protect my library. $2.99 a month was irritating, but worth the insurance.
I waited as the invisible hand of technology opened my soul’s suitcase, removed its personal belongings, scrubbed and disinfected the polluted cavity, restored the lining, and returned the contents. I was told it would “take a while, maybe a week” to complete the data transfer or….something….I didn’t really catch the rest after I signed the waiver. I was just glad my phone worked. And it did, except for one thing: some of the contents of my suitcase were left on the operating table. Without explanation, 40% of my data had been permanently lost in the transfer.
The trust I put in the almighty iCloud to protect my memories emptied from my head, drained through my heart, and landed like a brick gigabyte in my gut. I was sick. I felt a kind of existential nausea that comes with a loss that cannot be reversed or replaced. I no longer had access to my past. I walked in with 18k+ photos and 600+ videos and walked out with 10+k and 300+ photos. It was as if part of me had been deleted with my phone’s data.
(What will happen to my memory if I no longer have proof of my existence?)
The worst part was not knowing which images were deleted. iCloud seemed to randomly pick and choose which to save and lose. I didn’t realize I was missing two family trips to California this year until I went to my library to make this year’s Christmas Card. (See above a favorite photo, a casualty of the data loss, that I forgot I had until I remembered I had emailed it to myself…..)
Ah, cruel irony. I couldn’t remember what was missing because I needed the pictures to remind me of what I forgot I did and where I forgot I was. The more missing moments I remembered, the sicker I got over the images I no longer had to help me remember what I had forgotten. I had so closely linked my own memory with the images in my phone that I had conflated my memory with the images. If a memory vanishes when an image disappears, then is it really a memory?
I had relied on technology to preserve my memory; when technology failed me, I had to question the source of my grief: my own unreliable and illusive memory.
Grieving my thousands of lost images, prompted me to evaluate my own wary but resigned dependence on digital storage:
Is it healthy to have unfettered access to countless images of our lives?
Does accumulating thousands of digital images preserve memory? Or does it supplant it?
Is it even considered “a memory” if we need to reference a photograph to bring us back to another time, another place, another us?
Are we equipped—emotionally, psychologically, even spiritually—to process more digital images of our past than we can remember on our own?
Is unfettered access to memory healthy?
I’m not just mourning the loss of the photos and videos, I’m mourning my inability to fully remember my own life without the crutch of technology. Memory, defined as the mind’s a bility to store and remember information, is a cognitive function. If that’s the case, then needing an external source to remember may signal that we are exceeding what was intended to be internally stored and remembered.
Perhaps excess access to images actually interferes with our ability to sift and prioritize our countless experiences. Maybe it even interferes with our ability to process those memories. Revisiting images of moments that we have frozen in time--of joy, grief, and everything in between-- may also freeze the ability to process an awareness of our own complex journey of spiritual maturity. Some photos capture a time of grief that may tempt us to ruminate over past injury that has since healed. Others may capture a time of joy that can tempt us into an overly glorified nostalgia for the past. Either way, these still shots arrest a moment, petrify our perception, and paralyze our ability to grieve and grow beyond that moment frozen in time.
Perhaps petrifying a moment externally, prevents a memory from forming internally.
Maybe there is a practical reason for forgetting. Natural memory is our soul’s ability to remember our life experiences in moments of serendipity or necessity. Unnatural memory (aided by technology) provides access to images that activate moments we may not be prepared, or even need, to relive. Perhaps unfettered access to memory is not healthy. Our soul’s need to forget may be as much a part of our personal journey as its readiness to remember. Interfering with that fluctuation by relying on saved images to assist memory may very well threaten to disrupt the natural journey of our spiritual growth.
The paradox of memory is that it embraces both the forgetting and the remembering. Forgetting may be a necessary secret that our soul keeps when we need time to grow. Remembering is a gift that our soul receives when it is ready. Memory is not something we can always access with our mind, but something that tends to emerge from our heart when we are most ready to acknowledge it. The mind forgets what the heart remembers. The heart stores what no hand held device can: the mysterious sum of life which is greater than the sum of its past experiences, remembered and forgotten.
How can I remember my life if I no longer have proof of my existence? Trust my mind to re-mind me of what is most needed.
What will happen to my memory if I no longer have evidence of my life? Trust my heart to keep secrets to protect what is most vulnerable.
For those who may share a similar complex relationship with technology and humanity, feel free to share your thoughts.
Either way, enjoy this clip about tech by comedian Gary Gulman
“To me, the phone is this seldom used app on my phone.” Gary Gulman