Total Recall

A great punster once said, I am having amnesia and déjà vu at the same time. I have forgotten this before.

It is strangely exciting to know how short-term our instant-recall memories are. Or is it just me? Well, I have always been aware of the-disease-that-affects-one-and-all, aka, Childhood Amnesia. But guess what, I seem to be suffering from its new, improved and rather scary variant, Lifelong Amnesia. Beat that!! No mater how significant an event that seems to be happening in my life, I tend to have no apparent recollection of it. It's like being perpetually under general anaesthesia. Is this good or is this bad?

Upfront, I would say this is bad. Memories are for us to recall and cherish ever so often. Memories define an individual. Reminiscing about my glorious past has always been one of my most romantic pastimes. Whether this is a consequence of a confused present and an uncertain future, I don't know. What I know for sure is that without memories to give me company, I sometimes feel like a dead man walking. But is this really so? I mean, is this really so bad? What do we need memories for anyways? If memories are bad, we'd rather distance ourselves from them lest their aura rub off on our otherwise healthy present. If, on the other hand, memories are good, we run the risk of recalling them at times when we are not in the best of conditions and then end up sulking over a glorious era we have been a part at some opportune moment in the past. And either way, we forever run the risk of living in our past, neglecting our present, and eventually, jeopardising our future. Damn! This is confusing!!

Well, to be honest, when I say I have no recollection of my past, near or distant, what I really mean is that I have no conscious recollection. What I have instead is these periodic moments in time when I grow exceedingly nostalgic bordering nauseous; and I feel like a person drowning, short on breath and gasping for life. Whether such bouts are triggered by a resonance of now with then, resulting out of a perfect complementarity or uncomplementarity (if there is such a word) of circumstances that exist, situations that are perceived and conclusions that are drawn, I don't know. It is at these moments when my past flashes before my wide open eyes in bits and pieces, at times chronologically, and at others, not; but challenging me at every step to wake up and acknowledge the self that I was, then, and juxtapose it with the self that I am, now.

It is through these partial recalls that I construct the totality of my life. However, succumbing to the limitations of an inferior RAM, I go ahead again and back it up in some unforseen, unlit and unreachable recesses of my perpetually overcharged, overburdened and overworked mind. I guess I am not that tech-savvy yet to go in for a RAM upgrade. Or maybe, I don't want to, ever.