Memory and the Value of Experience

As every experience is converted to memory by leaving the present, and retreats away from you on the conveyor belt of time, time experience folds inwards on itself, so that when you look back at what has gone before, the gravity and magnitude of your experience seems comically belittled.  The time spent abroad, the painful marriage, the student years, they all shrink down in the memory to become mere snapshots, pictures simply painted in the colour of yearning or regret.  Occasionally a smell or other sense will break open the impermeable layer that lies between you and such experiences, and allow you a more visceral remembrance of the time gone by, but for the most part our experience, once confined to memory, fades to a shadow, to the facts.  The tumultuous experiences of the early years become childhood, the present and intense joy of a new relationship becomes an ex, and so the formative experiences of our lives become points on the checklist of memory, littered with lifeless snapshots and brief records of conversation.  The point then becomes what the point of any experience is, if not to enhance the meaningfulness of future experience, because experience, once converted to memory, most often breeds yearning, wistfulness, anger, and regret. 

In the eyes of many, the value of experience is primarily to allow develoment of self image, and to give a wealth of memories which can be relied on when circumstances are different; consider as an example the infirm, elderly man sitting in his chair all day reminiscing on the past.  I would suggest that since our memory of experiences are always belittled and insufficient copies of what actually happened, then to hope that a sufficient wealth of experience will allow us to lay back and enjoy the recollection what we did in earlier days is misguided.  Life can only be enjoyed in its fullness, for better or worse, in the present, and as such any experience we have should primarily be so that the future present can be experienced with more breadth and fullness.  To travel, undertake a new activity, or meet with friends should not be seen as an opportunity for accumulation of memories, or of photos, which are essentially the same thing, but as an opportunity to change the perception to allow future experience to be more full and vivid.  It is a misconception that the drive for success in sports is to do with achieving the highest accolade, ensuring that it need never be reached again since the memory, and the knowledge of the achievement provide vicariously for this need.  In actuality it is the sensation of success which provides the joy, and as such sportsmen, businessmen, and adventurers who attain feats far beyond the dreams of the average individual must continue to drive in the direction that feeds their sensation of being alive.  Think of Ranulph Fiennes still breaking adventuring records in his late 60’s.  One of the biggest lies you can feed yourself about the nature of memory is that any one experience can justify a period of boredom or inactivity.  In a period of doing nothing, the memory of the previous present will more often than not only make the current present seem that much more bitter.

This is not to say that there is no value to memory.  Memory performs many important functions, but most of these relate to teaching us lessons from the past which we can use to make our future present better.  Memory as pure nostalgia is largely useless in that it gives us any benefits in the present.  Reminiscing about shared memories with a friend is very different to sitting alone thinking about the past.  The first case falls under the category of an experience which is enhanced by those memories having been laid down in a previous present shared with another individual.  Reminiscing on your own is rarely an enjoyable pastime, as the memory serves to create or catalyse any new experience save for either a yearning for an unrepeatable past or a regret for mistakes or hurt in times gone by.  With nobody to share these things with, like Christopher McCandless found, the value of them is diminished, with somebody with which to share them, the memories become aids to better new experiences.  That is the difference.  Your experience in the present and the memories it creates should be the stimulus for new and more fulfilling experience down the line, since the memories on their own are bound to disappoint.