Remember anew

I forget a lot. In fact, I’ve written about this on numerous occasions.

Watching my son learn to play the guitar today, I was struck by the joy of a great memory, a mind that can attune to something, learn it in a short period, and hold the ideas together. I spent many months trying to learn a few chords. He seemingly has it figured out in days.

What a gift.

I have what I’d like to think of as a spiky memory. It’s got high points, followed by lows. And it’s entirely unpredictable what will stick and what will fly away on the breeze.

It’s been a point of frustration for those around me, and not least of all for myself.

When I was younger, it felt like a defect, something that should be fixable with effort and care and time. I strove to improve my ability to hold on to ideas, tested memorization techniques, and tied the proverbial string around my finger so I wouldn’t forget why I’d crossed a doorway.

It felt like I was destined to stay in a rut, with all the things I wished to hold flowing through my fingers.

Then a curious thing started to happen.

In my mid-twenties, I re-developed a love of reading. Nonfiction at first, but then I dipped my toes into fiction. For various reasons I'd felt like fiction was a no-go, so I approached novels carefully, as one might a doorway into the dark.

I realized that all the things I’d heard about such reading were patently false. The worlds that opened to me explained my own world.

And along with that came a gift I didn’t know I had. I started to remember. Bits and pieces at first, but my mind took to the stories, the environments, the concepts, the books, both real and fictional. They became part of me. Most of it flowed right out again, but just enough started to stay, to shape my mind, my being, and my way of approaching the world. So I kept reading, kept seeking to understand.

And over time, I changed. Reading changed me, and I’d like to believe for the better. I became more empathetic and started to see perspectives from angles I couldn’t have imagined. I saw others for who they were and was able to step into the minds, and the times, of authors.

And I remembered.

I could read a book, then start telling a friend about it, with whole swaths coming back to me. Once, over the period of several nights, I recited an entire novel to my son for a bedtime story; remembering every major beat.

I had to learn, of course, to be selective about such outpourings, realizing that not everyone wished for a thirty-minute recitation of my latest fascination with World War I.

But I found listening ears, found mutual excitement in others, and found that as I shared what I’d read, the ideas took hold even further. They grew a life of their own and began to shift and shape who I was.

That built up my confidence. I started to feel less bad about the things that escaped, the thoughts that disappeared, the conversations I forgot I’d had. Instead I focused on what held.

My friends, ever gracious, occasionally would remind me that I was treading ground we’d already covered, or give me a particular look, and I’d realize we’d had a similar conversation before.

But all in all, I had a selective mind clinging to more than I’d have dreamed possible, and that was enough.

I cannot imagine what it would be like to choose what to hold, to retain, to keep. But I’m incredibly grateful that so much does stick.

And in that change, that realization, I've come to learn something even more important.

We’re each born with abilities, limitations, gifts, challenges, backgrounds, unique circumstances—a million things we can neither control nor completely erase. We don’t get to choose how we got here. But sometimes, with just the right nudge from another, we might be able to muddle along until we find something we love.

And, sometimes it doesn't go the way we wish. Sometimes we're pushed too hard, broken too much, hurt one too many times——and we struggle to find the energy to get back up, to keep going. Healing takes time, being hard on ourselves only makes it harder. Having an expectation of improvement based on arbitrary limits only hurts what's possible. Instead of forcing, listening. Instead of rushing, waiting.

Through ups and downs I found a thing that worked for me.

I was delighted to find my curiosity had no bounds. I could draw from an unlimited well and keep filling it. Out of that curiosity would overflow a joy and delight in sharing with others, learning from them, swapping ideas, and seeing how those ideas could change me and the ones I love.

Each of us has possibilities ahead of us, divergent paths, things we can step toward or not.

In my case, a few kind souls nudged me in the right direction. It started with my mom reading us stories at bedtime. It continued with a computer program at school, with hundreds of stories I could read on an old CRT monitor. At one point, my teacher suggested Hatchet——yes a kid's story, but a good one. It gave me a hungering for more.

This didn’t just happen by chance.

I was helped along by others who cared, who wanted to share great stories.

And I found that by diving in and sharing what I’d learned, I’d remember.