What do our memories mean? Do they define us? Or is the past
dead? I once read that the past is not even past.
Do we just cling on to memories because they remind us of
who we used to be, and invariably, people always like who they used to be
better than whom they are now; unless may be if you were a drunk or a convicted felon.
Why do our memories move us so much? move us to tears, to hysteric
laughter, shake us to our very core; or even drive us to enthusiastically deny
that we are moved by them simply because who we are today is ashamed of them.
The ghosts of our past will, apparently, haunt us, may be
even till after death. Is this a good thing so that we never forget were we
came from and what made us who we are today?
The most vengeful of these ghosts are the ones you never see
coming, the ones that were lurking in the shadows of your soul for so long you
could never consciously summon them. But there they are very much alive, or
dead, or whatever it is these ghosts are. The past is never dead.
We all know that you can never escape your past, shun it or
deny it, but we all tell ourselves that that was who we were not who we are
now. Could be true. But it will always be there, part, if not the whole, of we
are and who we will become. Knowing that the ghosts are there is the worst part
of it.
It may be a macabre picture to envision the inside of your
soul, of your heart, like a bright beautiful house with a closed attic and
basement that you ignore and act as if they are not part of the house. But they
are, and that’s where are all the ghosts go to play. And those weird dreams you
have sometimes; those figments of a life well behind you that sometimes flash
before your mind’s eye; those faint far away sounds that come in and out of
focus, that’s where they come from, from that attic and that basement.
