The dance of time

Memories are strange things. Really strange.

Sometimes I wonder how they even get recorded. Why does the mind preserve certain useless little details for years and quietly erase things we once thought we would remember forever? Yesterday I stumbled upon an old school photograph and suddenly realized that I could no longer remember the name of my favorite teacher. It disturbed me a little. Not because I forgot the name itself, but because once upon a time I had believed it impossible to forget.

And then there are memories that come back without warning.

Sometimes through a smell. Sometimes through touch. Sometimes through music.

Music perhaps more than anything else.

There are songs I heard so many times in childhood that the cassettes almost wore out. And even now, years later, if one of those songs starts playing somewhere, I do not merely remember the past — I seem to travel back into it. For a few moments the distance collapses completely. It is strange how a tune can bring back not just events, but entire moods, entire evenings, entire forgotten versions of oneself.

But memories also do something else. They tie us to the past in ways we do not even notice.

People often speak about “those golden days.” Especially school days. Childhood. College. And yes, when I look back, many moments do appear beautiful now. But if I am honest, while living through those very days, was I really so happy? I doubt it sometimes. At that time too the mind was anxious about something else, dissatisfied with something else, wanting to reach somewhere else. Very often while living one phase of life, we are already trapped in another time altogether — regretting something old or worrying about something yet to come.

Perhaps memory edits life.

It softens certain things and exaggerates others. The painful parts slowly fade around the edges while the pleasurable moments remain brightly lit. Maybe that is why people go back again and again to the same emotional situations even after suffering through them once already.

Sometimes I feel that something within us must die to old memories before we can really look at life freshly again.

I do not know if that is true. It only feels true at times.

And then another thought comes to me — does memory also stop us from thinking clearly? Is the mind constantly taking recourse to the past because it is easier that way? The mind seems lazy in some strange manner. Or economical. Miserly perhaps. It likes habits. It likes familiar reactions. It likes ready-made conclusions. Perhaps it keeps using old experiences to make new decisions without even informing us properly.

A friend of mine once went through a painful relationship. After it ended, I thought he would surely choose differently next time. But after some years, what surprised me was not that he fell in love again — but that he fell almost for the same kind of person again. Different face, different name, different circumstances perhaps — but somewhere the pattern remained similar.

And strangely enough, he himself could not see it.

Then I realized something unsettling. The mind remembers pleasure very faithfully, but seems to forget suffering rather conveniently. Loneliness remains visible while old pain slowly loses its sharpness. And then suddenly what once hurt us begins looking desirable again.

Maybe we are all repeating ourselves far more than we imagine.

Maybe what we call personality is also partly memory — old patterns continuing silently underneath new situations.

And then I wonder:

Who is really pulling these strings inside us?

Who keeps replaying these old songs within the mind?

Who holds this strange musical instrument together, O Krishna?

Somewhere I once came across these lines:

“You will remain an enigma unto yourselves until you become humble and joyful as children. Then you shall find Me within yourselves, and looking from the great world within toward the little world without, you shall find that all is well — with time and with you.”

I do not fully understand these words, but something about them stays with me.

Children perhaps live differently from us. They cry completely, laugh completely, become angry completely — and then suddenly move on. Their minds do not cling for too long. Maybe that is why there is such freshness around them.

As we grow older, memory grows heavier.

And perhaps wisdom is not merely accumulating more and more memories, but also learning when not to be imprisoned by them.

I do not know.

I only know that sometimes, late at night, an old song begins playing somewhere and suddenly entire worlds begin opening again inside the mind.