Thursday Thoughts...

“Memory is fiction. We select the brightest and the darkest, ignoring what we are ashamed of, and so embroider the broad tapestry of our lives.” 

Isabel Allende, Portrait in Sepia

That first sentence. Memory is fiction. Not what we expect, in a way, when so much of our lives continues along the path of what we remember and what we can can recall. Our judicial system demands it. Our schooling system needs us to use our memory to recall things and therefore to learn. 

I guess what Isabel Allende is saying here pertains mostly to the memories we make of our life and how we likely choose the high points and the low points as key markers, and so often can't recall the many and multitude of moments that make a life a life.

I can't recall every meal I have prepared or eaten; I can't recall every shower I took and each time I washed my hair; I can't recall every conversation I have had with staff at my supermarket; and I can't recall every goal I scored in netball. And yet these are daily moments that have made-up the days of my life.

She makes me wonder about the things I am ashamed of. I am not sure I completely concur with her, as I seem to be able to draw up several key moments of shame and some actions of which I am ashamed and they are big and bright and take up a heap space.  I daresay there must be many other moments I am ashamed of that I can't recall.

I do agree that we recall some things and not others, and in this way we embroider the tale of our life, and that in some parts, it may well be a fiction.

Embroidering facts, 2021.