Of stumbling down memory lane or how memory shapes personality
Due to a typical Feylian f…mess up I left my lovely Dell’s cable at a client. So now I am back in front of a PC at the office where I poured out much of my soul last year this time. Amazing how the same playlist*, same view, hell…the same emoticons on MSN, drag out growling memories best left unpoked with a pointed stick**.
But since we are here, let’s river dance on the gravel of broken-hearted-way-back-when.*** Roughly last year this time I started forming what can only be described as a spectacularly bad idea. I was falling, nay hurling, in love with someone who filed me under the same level of attractiveness as say, a small white mushroom. After declaring my fungial lurve to him he kindly said no thank you. And then the blog started. Lookit here (bottom up folks) if you want a quick catch up.
More importantly though, I found the awesome love of God. My commitment to the faith has since waned considerably**** but I’m slowly reclaiming that space in my head.
The point of this post however, is how our memories, or lack of memories, shape who we are. Rambo, Himself and I had a brief discussion on Saturday about moments in our lives which either changed us or changed the direction of our lives so radically that the concept of who we think we are changed. Is there some unchangeable core of Feylian-ness which defies change? Or am I really the sum of my experiences, or more importantly the experiences I can examine?
Keep in mind that that memories are heavily edited things. We shape our world narratively (thanks PTerry’s – narrative causality) and as we tend to be the ones telling our own life stories we will almost without fail slowly (or not so slowly depending on the level of narrativium or denial in your cellular make up) change the story until we are portrayed as we hope to be. So are we ultimately who we decide we should be? Or do we eventually become that person?
Maybe our memories do not shape us so much as our thoughts do…but how much of our thoughts consists of stories we made up to understand the world?
1. Word of the day: advent (The Sage: 1. arrival that’s been awaited – especially something momentous). In Anathem Neal Stephenson gives this word (and quite a few more) a whole new meaning.
2. Insight of the day: If you are not as moved as you used to be by a certain thing, it might be because it has become a part of you.
3. State of the pool: Contemplatively sloshing out of the reach of a retarding sun
4. Joys of the day: 1. thinking again, 2. finding joy in long avoided gospel music, 3. knowing to my marrow that I am loved, 4. my leave starts Friday…a week of reading and bliss await.
5. Awesomest lines: Still Anathem from Neal Stephenson. READ IT. It will make you a better human being.
6. Scripture lines: God is God – Stephen Curtis Chapman
And the pain falls like a curtain
On the things I once called certain
And I have to say the words I fear the most
I just don’t know
And the questions without answers
Come and paralyze the dancer
So I stand here on the stage afraid to move
Afraid to fall, oh, but fall I must
On this truth that my life has been formed from the dust
God is God and I am not
I can only see a part of the picture He’s painting
God is God and I am man
So I’ll never understand it all
For only God is God
And the sky begins to thunder
And I’m filled with awe and wonder
‘Til the only burning question that remains
Is who am I
Can I form a single mountain
Take the stars in hand and count them
Can I even take a breath without God giving it to me
He is first and last before all that has been
Beyond all that will pass
Oh, how great are the riches of His wisdom and knowledge
How unsearchable for to Him and through
Him and from Him are all things
So let us worship before the throne
Of the One who is worthy of worship alone
* Including the earphones which squish my ears until they are a warm cherise of exquisite yelping owie. What’s that? Take it off? Pah. Don’t be silly. Soundslut reporting for duty ma’am.
**
*** Disclaimer: I love Him. I don’t want a life where He is not part of every day of my existence in no way am I considering ever going down that road again. This post is about memory shaping personality.
****I never stopped believing in the truth though. God remains all I want and all I’ve ever needed.
Recent Entries
- Of the new year and Dirt Music
- Of the guilty pleasure of watching The Bachelor
- Of marrying Twitter, Feedly and Google Wave
- Of teeth grinding frustration and the sheer awesome that is Google Wave
- Of stumbling down memory lane or how memory shapes personality
- Of beautiful girls
- Of total geekness
- Of bloody consequences
- Of being a lazy person
- Of rambling anxiety
