Jude Magnotti ‘26
EE Co-Managing Editor
Time is often referred to as the great destroyer of worlds. No matter how long you wait, no matter how hard you fight, time will always win.
From the greatest of empires to the loneliest of kingdoms, time has enveloped and crushed them all. Memories are no exception to this trend. As your body withers away with time, so does your mind, and as unfortunate as it may be, most people die having forgotten 95% of everything they did in life.
This is where the value of objects, photos, and other forms of recollection really come into the light. As small as it may be, no matter if it is a picture, a medal, or a painting, material objects can go a long way to bringing a symphony of emotions flooding back.
An object is at the end of the day still an object. What matters is the emotional value that we attach to them. It is at this point, when the importance of the object expands far past whatever it may have been before. Your brain works at inordinate levels of functionality, and in trying to provide for your body and life 24/7, it is naturally forced to leave things behind such as memories.
Most of these memories are forgotten, but fortunately for us, many of these neural pathways latch on to objects creating physical time capsules of emotions. We understand how much senses like sight, hearing, and taste can impact us, but we often underestimate the value of touch. As humans, physicality and feeling is an integral aspect of how we understand the world around us. In the case of memories, just feeling the edges of a table, or squeezing the back of a photo, or simply observing the texture of something can create a rush like no other.
The physicality and feeling often associated with physical objects as well is something that is often used by actors in the process of method acting. Now, a memory does not technically have to be a type of physical object that you can hold in your hand. With the revolution of technology and smartphones, it has become easier than ever to hold onto memories in the form of online pictures and videos.
In addition to touch, sight is arguably our most important sense when it comes to experiencing emotion. Just by scrolling to a video, you are able to fully re-experience that exact memory with the same sense of reality and feeling as you did when it first happened. This advantage of easily being able to save and go back to items on video is one that is often overlooked by a generation that does not know what it is like to live without technology.
This brings us to the exigence and purpose of this passage. GEN-Z, GEN-ALPHA, and really the whole world at this point is wrapped up in a world in which we crave constant stimulation. Whether that is through hits of dopamine or TikTok, or an obsessively dangerous commitment to a job, life is now passing by the eyes of generations quicker than it ever has before.
Combine this with the frequent stress, constant worrying, and concern about the future in adolescents, and those calm serene moments of living in the present have become few and far between.
This is what makes our memories even more valuable. Not only do we forget memories as we get older, but we are barely taking the time to experience them when they are actually happening. This goes for both the joyful and painful memories we encounter. As valuable as experiences are, people can tend to feel lost when their most pleasant and happy memories seem so far away. In this way, holding on to objects, photos, and other physical or digital embodiments of the past has become critical to taking a full overview of your life that your brain is just simply not able to comprehend as it ages.
So take a second, look around you, and take in every part of your life. From the sights, the sounds, the smells everything has its own unique place in your life. The reality is, even with reminders of the past, you will still end up forgetting the majority of it when things are said to be done. That’s why, if you want to live your life to the fullest extent, stay present, stay positive, and never forget that every detail, no matter how small or large, has an important place in your life.
Image by Michal Jarmoluk from Pixabay