The Art of Remembering

I became a serious journaller when I was about sixteen-years-old. Back in high school, when I had all the time in the world, a single entry could be as long as four thousand words. Thoughts would pour onto the computer screen without much filtering. I had some Kerouac ideal—believing that in order to be true to myself I had to unleash my thoughts in a sort of stream of consciousness. I didn’t even allow myself the luxury of rereading (and thereupon editing) my entry before hitting the print button. Once that last word was typed, the whole entry went straight to hard copy. Kind of like self-imposing a point of no return. You. It’s out there. No taking it back.

As years went by, time grew scarce, and so did my entries. In a desperate attempt to continue journaling, when oftentimes it was (sadly) the last thing on my mind, I resorted to expressing my thoughts—however fleeting, fragmented, and random—by hand in the decorative journals that I would frequently receive as gifts.

My mom told me that as a child I was always very quiet. Virtually all my report cards in grade school were the teachers’ comments that I needed to talk more. My mom told me that she had been gravely concerned about my shyness and introversion. Later on, when she noticed that I had begun writing, she was relieved. She understood that her children needed an outlet. In fact, it wasn’t until we were older that my mom told me that this was why she made all of her children learn instruments—she knew each of us needed some form of release.

Writing has always been a release for me. Morbid as it sounds, I always looked ahead to the future and thought—should the worst happen—at least I have 1) God, and thus prayer, 2) my writing, to save me.

I have an awful memory. If it weren’t for journaling, at least half of the things in my past would cease to exist simply because of the sheer ease in which I forgot them. The question is, If a memory is lost to time passing, does it exist?

But the act of recalling memories, or in my case, reading about them, is so vital to understanding how we have come to be. So often we take for granted who we are today. Or what we were. Or what we once wanted to be.

There are parts of ourselves that have changed for the better, and there are parts for the worse; there are agonizing complexities of our past that we have worked through, and there are beautiful simplicities that we alas no longer cherish; there are dreams and hopes that we once dwelled on yet never revisited, and there are ones that we unwittingly noted down again and again and again yet never saw them through.

Whatever the nature or circumstance surrounding these realities, they ultimately reveal truths about ourselves, and therefore, are replete with meaning—meaning that, if we were to probe deeper, would bring forth a larger understanding of ourselves, if not, a quiet thankfulness—for being alive, and being given the chance to taste the perpetual changing seasons of our lives.

Of course, nowadays, I don’t permit myself the indulgence of pouring my every thought onto paper. Maybe it’s because I choose not to. Maybe it’s because I no longer think it necessary. But I do know how invigorating it is to spontaneously and arbitrarily turn to a journal entry of mine now and then and read—simply to remember—and as a result of this virtually effortless act—to recover within me a longing to carry on.

Years ago, I watched the film Memento. The premise of the story always stayed with me whenever I thought about the whole act of journaling. In the story, the main character, Leonard, loses his short-term memory due to a brain trauma. His condition means that his brain is unable to store new memories. As a result, to survive his condition, Leonard keeps up a system of notes, photos, and tattoos in order to keep track of “facts” about himself and others. Leonard relies completely on his own self-made system. Whatever his notes, photos, and tattoos say—that is his reality—that is the reality that he chooses to know, to remember. Needless to say, an immense degree of trust is involved because Leonard himself is the one who decides what is recorded.

I don’t remember how old I was when I decided to do this—but at some point, I made a conscious decision to no longer record my embarrassing moments. I realized that I didn’t really want to remember those moments, and as long as I didn’t record them, those moments would vanish into the past, just as I would like them to.

I’m a bit more discerning when it comes to my angry moments, or any other moment that exposes a darker side of me. Some of them, I know, are best forgotten. But not all of them. Some of them I need to remember. Because they are a part of who I was, who I am, and more importantly, what I’ve been redeemed from.

For me, the act of journaling is one that continually reminds me of how my entire existence rests at the hands of the Living God. The tragically painful moments paint a portrait of life’s inevitable droughts and valleys, but at the same time, the eventual emergence of rain and glimpse of the mountains; the joyful moments, then, the grace of God in granting the miracle and beauty of healing.

On the other hand, the basic, bare, unembellished moments elicit anything from fondness, distress, tenderness, pity, amusement, regret to pure pleasure. I have found that as I’m writing, though I find nothing poetic about such sentences as—Lee held my hand, or Nathaniel smiled at me today, or Lee and I had a fight last night—they are as poetic as can be when I am standing far into the future, looking back. In their entirety, these moments multiply tenfold, a hundredfold, in meaning.

You see, in the end, the act of journaling is a spiritual process: it stipulates a faith that there will be a past worth looking back on, one that holds a story worth reliving, and for the writer, retelling, and for the Christian, revealing to the world the One to whom these pages belong.