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MEMORIES
NEVER DIE
Memories are transmitted through generations and
even through a heart or liver transplant.
How then can we not have a responsibility to create
good memories?
Like
snakes shed their skins periodically, I have come to
think
we shed a bit of ourselves too. But unlike snakes,
we
don't completely walk away from the skin we shed.
We
leave a bit of ourselves behind, with everyone we
meet,
and everywhere we go also carrying back with
us
bits of others in the shape of memories as we walk away.
So
many people we love or hate, so many we interact
with
in various positive and negative ways; so many
words
spoken and unspoken, so many thoughts shared
or
stored away, so many emotions felt, shared or
rejected;
castles we build and then bring down in
our
imaginations; promises, hopes, expectations,
happiness,
grief can you imagine all of it out there,
hanging
like eternal droplets in the air?
Memories don't die; they stay. They stay within us as
well
as surrounding us. We may push them away
consciously
as we move on as move on one should!
And
yet, bits and pieces of memory remain suspended
where
we were.
In
Thanks For The Memories, Cecilia Ahern tells the story
of
a woman, who receives the memories of a man through
a blood transfusion, and her sudden,
inexplicable bond
with
him. In real life, there are instances of people
remembering
incidents and emotions they have no
logical
reason to remember. In a recorded incident,
a
person who received the heart of a murdered girl
could
identify her killer for the police! In other cases,
recipients
have started speaking hitherto unknown
languages,
vegetarians craving non-vegetarian food
and
people have seen their choices of music change
all
to attributes of the donor.
Scientists
have discovered that our skin cells, especially
the
cell membranes, carry our memories and learned
behaviour
patterns.Cells are living entities that give us
our
identity and have our brand on them. Every 24 hours,
we shed almost a million skin cells which
then lie around
as dust on our tables, computers and houses.
Can it then
not be surmised that along with these cells,
which are
miniature
bits of ourselves, parts of our identity and
memories
are scattered all around too? A little bit of all
of
us all around?
A lot of our instinctive learnings come through the memories
that are passed down through generations.
What is DNA
but
memories carried from our ancestors through to us?
Scientists have discovered that learned information about
stressful events can be passed down
generations fears,
likes,
dislikes. This may account for our instant and
unexplained
emotions towards a stranger or to certain
stimuli.
The difference between reptiles and mammals
though
is that the former live for the moment and for
themselves,
while mammals do think of the past and
plan
for the future, and are caring towards others.
In
the words of chemist Dr Bruce Lipton, reptiles are
`conscious',
while we are `self-conscious'.
As
children, we usually laughed it off when our elders
told
us to watch our tongue and not say nasty, negative
stuff.
Their fear was that it might come true if we voiced it.
Was
that because the Collective Consciousness already
knew
that words, thoughts, hopes and memories stay
forever?
So what happens when we die? Dr Lipton explains this
with
the analogy of a television set. If the picture tube
breaks
down, the TV is dead, but the broadcast doesn't
stop;
you just get another set and the programme continues
beaming. The memory is in the field. We are
immortal,
he
explains, and just come into the system for a while to
receive
the transmission and to create what we thought
we
would create in Heaven. We create our own lives and
we
add to the Collective Memory bank, and so make a
difference.
Says
Ahern in Thanks for the Memories, “It's funny how
people
mark their lives, the benchmarks they choose to
decide
when the moment is more of a moment than any
other.
For life is made of them. I like to think the best
ones
of all are in my mind, that they run through my
blood
in their own memory bank for no one else but me to see.“
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vinitadawra
nangia
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TL22NOV15
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