In some of our work we have dealt with the immediacy of the negative having lasting effect, while the accomplishment of the positive comes and goes quickly. The negative lasts after the fact, so maybe that has conditioned us to look for the positive to last in a similar way. Are we looking in the wrong place? Maybe it’s an opposite identity; the positive is taking place before the fact. Learning to live in the now may be an achievement, but quickly lost if you are unable to remember how you got there.
Thank you Tasso, for sharing this quote.
From a book called, “Moon-walking with Einstein,” by Josua Foer
How we perceive the world and how we act in it are products of how and what we remember. We’re all just a bundle of habits shaped by our memories. And to the extent that we control our lives, we do so by gradually altering those habits, which is to say the networks of our memory. No lasting joke, invention, insight, or work of art was ever produced by an external memory. (external memory: information we store on hard drives of computing devices, ex.a photograph) Not yet, at least. Our ability to find humor in the world, to make connections between previously unconnected notions, to create new ideas, to share in a common culture: All these essentially human acts depend on memory. Now more than ever, as the role of memory in our culture erodes at a faster pace than ever before, we need to cultivate our ability to remember. Our memories make us who we are. They are the seat of our values and source of our character. Competing to see who can memorize more pages of poetry might seem beside the point, but it’s about taking a stand against forgetfulness, and embracing primal capacities from which to many of us have become estranged. That’s what Ed had been trying to impart to me from the beginning: that memory training is not just for the sake of performing party tricks; it’s about nurturing something profoundly and essentially human.
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