On memory

Memory: From the Mountains to the Ocean, April-May, 2018

Over the last five years, I've accumulated two suitcases full of memories; spiral-bound, 5-subject journals, dating back to September 2013, filled with stream-of consciousness observations and real-time reflections on navigating my way through the world amidst a series of life-altering transitions. 

During this time, I've grown increasingly interested in how journaling can offer insights into the ways in which memory is formed, and how interpretations of memory shape perception. 

As a starting point, I recently transcribed all of my journal entries from my spring travels to Nepal and Portugal, running the raw text through a word cloud engine to identify predominant themes in my writing. (If you aren't familiar with word clouds, the premise is that the larger a word appears in a cloud, the higher its occurrence in a block of text.)

​I was curious to identify common themes that were coming through in my stream of consciousness during my time in Nepal and Portugal as the energy was fresh, and how the themes aligned with my current memories and perceptions of these experiences. What was there to learn?

Journal entries from Nepal, April 2018

Journal entries from Portugal and the Azores, May 2018

​I was also curious to examine my travel journalling from a bigger picture perspective, combining both sets of journal entries for the word cloud shared at the top of this post.

As illuminating as it was for me to synthesize hundreds of pages of travel content into a handful of ideas, this exercise generated more questions than answers:
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• Under what conditions do memory and real-time initial impressions join forces, and when do they diverge? In other words, what are the elements that shape and inform our interpretation of past experiences, and how close do our memories of an experience compare to with the actuality of the experience? Is there a difference?
  
• In what ways does time influence memory, and how does the divergence or convergence of time and memory influence our current construct of reality?
•  What are the elemental properties of memory? In other words, if memory were something tangible, what would it look like, and how would it behave? Is it malleable? What are its limitations? 
•  What causes us to block memories or repeat our mistakes? What prevents us from learning from our past? What inherent truths do we know deep down that we forget? How can our awareness of memory and perception help inform our wholeness?

​Seeking thought partners.