Life and Memory
August 6, 2006 at 8:25 pm
· Posted under category Intellectual
Life.
"The property or quality that distinguishes living organisms from dead organisms and inanimate matter, manifested in functions such as metabolism, growth, reproduction, and response to stimuli or adaptation to the environment originating from within the organism."
I got the above definition from dictionary.com, and I believe it to be quite accurate and nearly complete from a scientific perspective. I have recently had to experience watching someone close to me go through difficulties that arose due to old age and internal medical complications. This got me thinking a bit... what does life really mean? Why should I want to know what life actually means and how does my understanding of the term differ from a definition which isn't relative to one person's perspective or emotions. I then realized that our (the common human beings of this age) understanding of life ties in very closely to memory. So what exactly is memory? Here's another definition from dictionary.com:
Memory.
"The mental faculty of retaining and recalling past experience. The act or an instance of remembering."
Before I continue further with what is on my mind while writing this little article, I would like to point out that I have a natural tendency to take a scientific and logical stance while addressing something. And this article is based around the same stance; I try to understand something better, based on my own reasoning and then try to reinforce or change that understanding based on scientific facts and logic.
Okay, so we know what the terms "life" and "memory" mean, or at least one definition (each) of them. As I mentioned earlier, I believe that our understanding of life ties in very closely to memory. Think about it, if one person (let's call him Mr X for now) lived his life as a farmer for 75 years before dying - there would be certain people who would remember him. And the memories of those people form the very foundation of his existence. What if Mr X was a person who worked in a corporate company? There would be records of his employment and achievements inside that company's databases. These records are again forms of memory (not literally the same type), and are at least translated into memory when accessed by people. Those memories and records, are proof that Mr X existed.
When a person lives his (or her) life, he accumulates a lot of memory as he grows older and lives through different experiences. Technically, I guess one can describe his life as a biological entity which is growing based on many functions within his body. When he sees something, and reacts to it, signals are sent to and from his brain via nerves and how he reacts will depend on what information the brain (the part dealing with memory) sends back after assessing the initial signals. There might be a certain type of food that Mr X likes, people that Mr X loves, an environment that Mr X finds comfortable, etc. But all of these originate from his own memory. Even though "memory" is something we cannot picture as a solid object, I like to think of memory as an embodiment of everything Mr X was, is, and ever will be. There are people like me who use the computer a lot, despite ignoring the fact that I am required to use it within my profession. As the years go on, there is a lot of electronic data relating to me which is stored at different sources: my email, my website, online shopping, accounts on multiple websites, and so on. That's not all, maximum data relating to me is actually stored elsewhere: my brain. The details of my computer, personal information and profiles, usernames and passwords, intellectual data and skills learnt by programming and through the use of different applications in different environments, and even moral values learnt by reading news and articles on the internet... to name a few, these were just a few of the things that I store in my head relating to my activities on the computer. Although other people have similar memories, all of these are specifically unique to me. The same thing applies to memories obtained by activities outside the world of computers: people we know, our conversations with them, our experiences at home and work, and everything that happens in our daily lives. What happens to all this information when we die? All of that information, experience and the skill-set that I have - will mean nothing once I am no longer alive. What will remain though, is the memory of my existence in the minds of other people and certain records/databases; and even that will die after a certain period of time or once the people who knew me have passed away. The same remains true for a super majority of people in the continuous life and death cycle of human beings, except the few who do gain a lot of fame and are remembered again by different people since the existence of those famous people is recorded in various sources. Why do some people try to achieve fame anyway? The answers may differ, as different people have different characteristics and the motives behind those people differ thusly. Even though I am quite young, and have a majority of my life ahead of me; I am sure I will ask myself, when I am very old, whether people (and who) will remember me. Because for my existence to live on after my death, it needs to be accepted and remembered by others. And then the most obvious question is: would it really matter to you if you were remembered after you died? To me, the answer right now would be "no", as I do not believe in life after death. So rather than caring about how and why people might remember me after I am gone, I would instead like to work towards -living- a happy life, and giving myself and the ones around me/dear to me some level of happiness.
Being happy, ofcourse, is a relative state of mind and differs from person to person. I believe that everyone who tries to make sure they leave a mark in an organization where they have worked, or everyone who tries to work towards making sure they will be remembered, should really reconsider their actions and work towards enjoying themselves instead (note: enjoyment is also relative and differs from person to person: one person may find enjoyment in saving money for his children's education and another person may find enjoyment in completing a task satisfactorily). Normally, most people don't even realize this or think about life at this level; their life goes on and they continue to live it, feeding their own memory and the memory of others. That's alright for them, being content and happy with the information people have is not a bad thing; however I personally have this weird tendency to look at everything from a... different perspective. And the above is what I feel above life and memory as such, two entities which are very closely linked to each other - and cannot exist without the other.
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Gaurav Verma, 06 August 2006.
