If you read Rafa’s “Theories of Time Pt. I: The Fundamental Paradox of Nostalgia & the Perils of the Treasure Chest,” I would just like to commend you for putting up with the type of hyper-intellectualized, abstract discourse with which I have put up for the past four years—the type in which we can take a very simple phenomenon integral to life itself, like the sweet pleasure of reliving a moment of one’s past, and then try to create some sort of universally applicable theoretical paradigm that would explain the why behind that phenomenon. There are two places I know of where this type of discussion happens: (1) on college campuses, and (2) Reddit.

This blog is itself a kind of dialogue, an attempt to trade ideas back and forth now that the authors of this blog have finished school and are in the “real world,” isolated from the carefree (i.e. between people with tenure who literally don’t have to care about what they say because they have total job security) academic bantering that takes place in the ivory tower. The issue of memory is a curious one, and though I cannot speak in a social scientific way as to how exactly it works, I do want to make the following contribution about the function of memory to the discussion given my theological formation:

I took a class with Gustavo Gutiérrez last year, who quoted Augustine’s contention that “memory is the present of the past.” Memory is the present of the past. On one level the statement has to be true: in a certain sense the present is all that exists—and at the very least it is all that is perceptible to our senses—and thus memory is fundamentally a present occurrence: whatever processes occur in one’s brain when he or she undertakes the task of remembering, whatever synapses are fired up, exist only in the present and thus are of the present (well, I guess I am trying to speak scientifically. I am in no way qualified to do this, lol).

Perhaps another way to phrase this is that memory is the past re-presented: it is the mechanism by which the past is made present again, this time within the subjective domain of our own minds so as to potentially have an objective effect on our lives. There is some Eucharistic theology involved here (e.g. the Eucharist, done “in memory of [Jesus],” is a making-real again of that which occurred 2000 years ago on Calvary), but I do not think that this idea is applicable only in the field of theology: my college years are not in some sort of isolated “past,” separated from who I am today, but rather have a substantive effect on who I am and what I do in the present. The past defines the present, gives it character, and in that way is as present as the present itself.

(See here an example of taking a very simple phenomenon integral to life itself and coming up with some sort of universally applicable theoretical paradigm that attempts to explain it, instead of just going “well, of course the past would influence the future, duh.” IDK why I spend time on this)

But the point was to talk about the function of memory. I believe that the function of memory, of the past-made-present, is to change the present so as to shed light on the future. We grapple with our past because how we choose to perceive it changes who we are and how we understand ourselves, and, to steal an idea from this program that I did two years ago on vocation, “who we are changes everything we do” (source).

Remembering can thus become a kind of hope for us because the action of remembering forms the one who remembers, and if we remember properly, if we learn to see, then perhaps we might learn to live better. The previous article floated the idea that the tension between idealizing the past and wanting to change the past exists expressly “to force us to come to terms with the reality that sometimes one’s past isn’t perfect; yet, this should be no reason to think of it as any less beautiful, precious, or worth protecting.” I would have to agree, and add the following clarification: it is precisely the action of having encountered beauty in the past, without which we would not have known the beautiful, that makes us seek beauty in the present; it is precisely the acknowledgement of imperfection in the past that motivates us to be better than once we were.

So yes, go ahead and spend time reminiscing. By all means, do not forget about “the chest.” But don’t let yourself get stuck in the past-that-is-not; rather, allow yourself to focus on how the past intersects with your present, and then go shape a better future.