The art of remembering

A lifelong worth of memories should be impressive and should be huge in terms of the actual quantity of information it contains, but in reality, this doesn't seem to be the case.

Again, I'm talking about long-term memories, not the short-term kind that starts playing tricks on us as soon as we enter our sixties.

One thing is certain; long-term memory isn't improving with age either and seems to be decaying fast if we fail to make a constant effort to maintaining or refreshing it regularly.

Today, since I'm a visual guy, when I think of my life, from the moment I could recall anything, my memories are like a movie badly damaged in which only a few isolated, single frame remains intact and most of the time somehow legible. From them, I can connect the dots and recreate the gist of the story, but it remains largely an exercise in imprecision.

The only element that helps in that endeavor is the vast photo archives I've kept, as well as testimonies from friends and relative, have been invaluable in triggering or refreshing some of my past remembrances.

That's exactly when I regret so much not having kept a daily journal of what happened to me ever since I could write...