We are obsessed with the future: there is endless pleasure in imagining what could be, hope for what’s not yet. A natural objection to this is that we need to live in the present, for only there do we “really” exist. In either case, we leave out a third party: the past.
What is the past’s purpose when life can only be lived in one direction? After all, it’s gone, over, used up, like a burnt-out match or an empty milk carton. Yes, there are lessons from the past we can learn, but we tend to extract them and hurry on so as not to linger in regret or embarrassment about what our younger selves did or failed to do. Whether happy or painful, the past is gone. It doesn’t exist, except in memory – and memory is both faulty and fickle.
And yet. Who or what are we without our memories? It’s a philosophical riddle that hasn’t been solved (yet), but I venture to make the practical argument that our memories – both positive and difficult – are not only a wellspring of wisdom, but of comfort. One we can draw on for the rest of our lives.
Good news: The past is real
The 18th-century English essayist Samuel Johnson remarked that the depth of our memory and our sensitivity to the past is what makes us different from the rest of the animals. Then he makes this claim:
As the satisfactions, therefore, arising from memory are less arbitrary [than those of the future], they are more solid, and are, indeed, the only joys which we can call our own. Whatever we have once reposited…in the sacred treasure of the past, is out of the reach of accident, or violence, nor can be lost either by our own weakness, or another’s malice. 1
I find this idea both novel and yet obvious: happy memories are something nearly all of us have at our disposal. Unlike money in an investment account, no change in world events can touch them. They are ours forever. We can revisit them for comfort, for assurance, for perspective, to feel more grounded.
Why don’t we take advantage of this fact more often? I can think of at least two reasons. One is that we tend to dwell on the negative and the urgent, neither of which is typically found in revisiting meaningful memories. Another reason, perhaps related, is a not-uncommon belief that the past somehow isn’t “real.” Or if it is, it’s not relevant.
To this, William Hazlitt – another English essayist – makes this bold rebuttal:
I conceive that the past is as real and substantial a part of our being, that it is as much a bona fide, undeniable consideration in the estimate of human life, as the future can possibly be. To say that the past is of no importance, unworthy of a moment’s regard, because it has gone by, and is no longer any thing, is an argument that cannot be held to any purpose: for if the past has ceased to be, and is therefore to be accounted nothing in the scale of good or evil, the future is yet to come, and has never been any thing. 2
In other words, how could the past be less real than the future? And if neither is real, life is absurd. Now, of course, you can argue about what Hazlitt means by “real” – and in academic philosophical circles, this is indeed a serious debate. But Hazlitt is not a trained philosopher; he’s a writer and artist appealing to his emotional lived experience. And frankly, I agree with him. He goes on:
Nay, the [future] is even more imaginary, a more fantastic creature of the brain than the [past]…for the future, on which we lay so much stress, may never come to pass at all, that is, may never be embodied into actual existence in the whole course of events, whereas the past has certainly existed once, has received the stamp of truth, and left an image of itself behind. (Emphasis mine).
Hazlitt died in 1830, just before photography became available to the public, but the “stamp” he’s referring to – I believe – is not something static like a photo, but something both warmer and more dynamic. The present lasts for mere moments but memory holds them forever, however roughly and imperfectly, allowing us to make sense of who we are, where we’ve been, and where we’re going.
Above all, our proudest, most defining memories and achievements can’t be undone. We may lose a loved one, but the history of the relationship is not undone – that history is as real with them gone as with them alive, because in either case, it’s in the past and out of the reach of the future.
What about the bad things?
There’s an obvious objection to all of this: What about bad and unpleasant things that have happened?
The notion of the past as secure and unbreakable can sound more like a prison than a vault of treasure, depending on what memories we’re referring to. But memories are more than granular events replayed in our brain; they comprise who we are. And that includes the difficult things we have overcome.
At the height of World War II, in a Nazi concentration camp, Viktor Frankl and his comrades were having an especially bad day. The prison guards had announced new, strict rules that included instant death by hanging for anyone who stole small items or made bandages out of their blankets. Deaths – by exhaustion, execution, and suicide – were mounting. Frankl and the rest of the prisoners refused to rat out a comrade for stealing potatoes; as a result, they were forced to starve the entire day. As night crept closer, morale was at an all-time low. The senior block warden pleaded with Frankl and his comrades not to give up hope – then, in a wise and unexpected move, he turned to Frankl and asked him to share a few words with the prisoners.
Making a rousing speech was the last thing Frankl felt like doing at that moment, but he summoned the last traces of energy he had. He began by reminding his comrades about the reasons left for hope, the things that were still within their power, the things they still had (“our bones intact”), and the possibilities of the future. Then he turned to a different subject, just as important – the past:
But I did not only talk of the future and the veil which was drawn over it. I also mentioned the past; all its joys, and how its light shone even in the present darkness. Again I quoted a poet – to avoid sounding like a preacher myself – “What you have experienced, no power on earth can take from you.” Not only our experiences, but all we have done, whatever great thoughts we may have had, and all we have suffered, all this is not lost, though it is past; we have brought it into being. Having is also a kind of being, and perhaps the surest kind. 3
After he shared a few more inspiring words, Frankl’s comrades limped forward to thank him, tears in their eyes. Frankl had helped them find meaning in their suffering, and in doing so, temporary but crucial relief that could have very well meant the difference between life and death. The philosopher Nietzsche, himself no stranger to suffering, lived by the motto amor fati: It is, he wrote, “that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity.” 4
Most of us will (thankfully) not have to endure what Frankl and his comrades endured, and most of us, despite our best efforts, will still have things we regret and things we would like to forget. But I am convinced that the act of recalling and revisiting the past adds wonder, gratitude, and perspective in a way that few other exercises can. So many focus on the loss of youth, health, and opportunity as the hallmark of getting older; what if instead we looked at it as a storehouse of moments and accomplishments that no one can touch, ours to cherish as long as our faculties hold together?
Perhaps Seneca sums it up best:
Accordingly the life of the philosopher has wide scope…should a period of time have passed, he embraces it in his memory; if it is present, he makes use of it; if it is to come, he anticipates it. By combining all times into one he makes his life a long one. 5
Not all of us will live as long as we’d like to, but we have the choice to make the years we do have as long as possible. And much of that is thanks to the rich, mysterious, and comforting gift of memory.
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