What We Remember
Thinking back over your life, what are the things you remember? And why do you remember them?
If we were to ask a group of people these questions, I’m sure the answers would be as varied as the individuals who came up with them. That’s not only because each of us has a different set of memories. It’s also because the things that stay with us can do so for very personal reasons. While others who experienced the exact same thing might relegate it to the drawer of forgotten moments, the experience stays with you. And sometimes haunts you.
Why do we remember things? The first reason would be because a certain event was so powerful that it left a lasting impact. Think of a cannonball or meteor that strikes the ground with such great force that its momentum as it continues to plow through the earth leaves a deep and enduring trench to mark the place forever. Some memories are like that.
The strong and sometimes traumatic emotions attendant on a painful or frightening experience can leave a deep emotional scar on our mental landscape. Conversely, enormous joy can also leave its mark, flooding us with happiness each time we remember it. The difference is that we actively choose to conjure up the joyful event, while the traumatic one has a nasty habit of showing up uninvited. And usually, far more often than we’d like.
There are, of course, some types of momentous events that stay with everyone. Births and deaths. Great triumphs and abysmal failures. The start of an important relationship or the end of one. Such milestones, whether happy or sad, are the kinds of things that tend to stick around regardless of who we are. Sort of common denominator memories.
But we all have other, seemingly minor memories that linger even though others may not remember them. Small moments that meant a lot to us at the time. A word or a gesture that turned the tide in a relationship. Tiny details that spoke to you personally, though they mattered hardly at all in the great scheme of things.
These are our personal and highly individual memories, and we cling to them almost as tightly as to the “big” ones. In a sense, what we remember defines who we are.
Another reason we remember things is when, deliberately or not, we review them. A favorite story told over and over will remain in a family long after other stories are gone. Each time something is repeated, neurologists tell us, it deepens a track in the brain, the same way that the repeated passage of feet or wheels along the same route will create a clearly defined trail. Chazal urge us so strongly to review what we learn. The more we repeat and review, the more entrenched the material becomes in the pathways of our mind.
I remember my son coming home from yeshiva one day, distraught. “Our rebbi says that we’re going to have to start memorizing Mishnayos! I’ll never be able to do it!”
But once he gathered the courage to begin, patient review showed him that he actually had a far better memory than he’d given himself credit for. It also taught him a valuable lesson for life: that chazarah is the key to remembering anything. The goal is to use the spade of repetition to dig those vital neural pathways ever deeper.
My son’s success in memorizing Pirkei Avos inspired my husband to do the same. Later, other members of the family followed in our turns. My husband and I also memorized the Taryag mitzvos in the order of both the Rambam and the Sefer Hachinuch. During the sometimes depressing era of the Covid lockdown, I recall the lift I got from sitting each evening with my husband to review a perek of Pirkei Avos and our daily quota of mitzvos. The constant review not only preserved what we’d memorized; it helped keep me sane and relatively content during a difficult time.
Social Shoals and Symbols
The third reason we remember things is because we feel it’s important that we do so. Again, the criteria for “important” varies from person to person.
For a politician, for instance, having a good recall for faces and names can be vital for winning elections. The same skill can be parlayed into success for any of us in navigating the social shoals of our lives. A propensity to forget people’s names is not helpful when trying to find your place in a new neighborhood or workplace. Likewise, we try to keep important information such as birthdays, phone numbers and PIN numbers handy in the overstuffed storerooms of our busy brains.
To those women who resent the fact that they remember important family dates while their husbands can’t be bothered, here’s something to bear in mind. A date is just a symbol for the actual experience. As long as hubby appreciates the fact that you agreed to marry him, don’t worry if he forgets the exact day that it happened! For him, there are more important things to keep uppermost in his mind.
If you let him know, lovingly and respectfully, that it’s important to you, that’s when it needs to become more important to him. But we can’t expect others to automatically attach the same degree of significance to every item of memory data in our shared lives. That would be like trying to make every snowflake look exactly like its fellow. Impossible.
Reconnecting With Love
The yomim tovim come around each year to put us in touch with things we need to remember. Not only the precise event that took place on that date in our shared history, but also its meaning for us down the ages to this day.
When we build our sukkahs each year, it helps us remember a time when Hashem lovingly provided us with shelter in a hostile desert.
When we make sure that slivers of sky are visible through the schach, it serves as a reminder that Hashem’s benevolent gaze is always upon us. We sense His ongoing presence in our lives more acutely within those flimsy huts than when we’re surrounded by four sturdy walls which, while keeping the world out, can sometimes also keep out the things we need to hold onto for dear life.
Sukkos is a time for remembering, and for joyously reconnecting. The trembling and solemnity of the Yomim Noraim may have pushed into the background our consciousness of the abiding love that exists between Hakadosh Boruch Hu and His “firstborn” nation. This time of year is when we bring it firmly back into the foreground.
This is when we remember the forging of our relationship with Him, which left such a profound impact that they can never be forgotten. A living, breathing impact that lives on not only in our memory, but in our every waking moment.
