Based on feedback over the years from you, loyal reader, I suspect I'm not alone in this misremembering - the consensus in the TOA audience is that July 12 is reserved for just the one topic. The fact that we could all be wrong in this way demonstrates something I've learned about memory. The way I understand it, the brain's recall process subtly changes the memory each time we retrieve it, with some suggesting that over time we start remembering the memory rather than the original. The rough analogy coming to mind is a writer's revision - the published copy has the DNA of the first draft, but each edit moved the work incrementally until the final elements bear little resemblance to their initial counterparts. This wouldn't be an issue if we collectively dismissed the value of memory, but sadly it seems that a defining characteristic of the human existence is a reverence for the past. I feel this perspective suggests a preference for certainty, and perhaps also enables us to put off the necessity of facing the future, about which the only certainty is uncertainty. It also makes it harder to accept the premise that what we remember, what we remember without question, is more likely than not to be at least partially inaccurate. At the very least, it may be wise to think less of the past given that we may not know as much about it as we like to think.
And yet, there are good arguments for respecting the past, including its educational value - they say those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it. This raises an urgent question - how can we learn anything from memory if it shifts everything around like high tide renovating a sand castle? One answer, I suppose, is to strengthen and support our memory, with primary sources being a reliable option. If your goal is to know what happened, then the best way is to find something that describes what happened as it happened. The July 12 TOA timestamps are a decent example in my context, but I actually think my running mileage log is an even better case study. Over the past few years I've treated July 12 as one of the Major Events in my running season, building up my mileage throughout the spring in order to enjoy a lively eight or ten mile session on the day. It's always served as a personal memorial of sorts because I used talk with my mom about running in a way that I haven't done with anyone else. The main obstacle with talking to others was about the primary reason they ran - for health and exercise, for a challenge, for a way to enjoy the outdoors, for vanity about appearance, for their identity, for a way to kill boredom, for whatever reason but mine, which mattered because I could never connect with people whose motivations were so incompatible with my own. What I used to find talking to my mom was how we both simply enjoyed running, would run all day if practical, so losing the only person I could honestly connect with about running became the most important of the least important July 12 losses.
So at this point I would reiterate that one priceless feature of the annual July 12 run was to honor and acknowledge this loss, but here again enters fact-checker, the memorial wrecker. When I referred back to my running log to see how much mileage I'd accumulated over these recent July 12's, I was in for a familiar story - in three of the past six years, I didn't run on July 12 at all. Some memorial! This is actually even worse than my performance with July 12 posts - at least I posted something, even if it wasn't strictly related to the day. In the running example it's much worse because I've made a story out of ninety minutes during which I actually did nothing, and the deception went so far that I even fooled myself. I suppose that the great memorial in my mind was, once again, misremembered.
Here we return to the same question about memory, and the instinct is to once more blame the limitations of the human brain, or perhaps I should say its gullibility, at least in terms of accepting whatever new detail the recalled memory invents to tweak the past. It's as if the memory, free to run all day, has demonstrated the problem with such a mentality - nothing outruns time. Just as time will eventually catch up to a runner, so too it will someday overtake the memory. The problem, of course, is the inevitability of it, the threat is relentless, the passage of time nonnegotiable, each unstoppable second bumping into one of the many precious details that balance above the abyss in the infinite mind.
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The most embarrassing thing about these July 12 memory failures is that I knew at some level that this might happen way back on that first July 12. Or at least, I suspect so, as this would explain why I suddenly and briefly kept a journal during that time. The journal has the facts and figures, trivia really, from those few weeks that might otherwise disappear in some cobwebbed corner of my head. The journal can tell you the rough outline of what happened, and when, and who was involved; it can tell you how I felt about it all. Sometimes I flip through it, experiencing various emotions old and new as time stretches and collapses through my fingers, always marveling at some new discovery or forgotten detail. Every time, I close the notebook and resolve to get back in the journaling habit so that I can someday have the same experience looking back on this time, these days, to gift the present to my future. Of course, this resolve lasts just long enough to put up a losing battle against the next idea - a walk, a nap, a drink with friends - and I soon forget what made journaling such a nice idea. This isn't to say I reject the notion entirely, evidenced by the journal-type substances that have sporadically graced TOA, but it's clear to me by now that I won't do it in my daily life.
I'm not sure exactly why I won't journal again, especially considering my positive reaction to the previous effort as well as the accumulating evidence that I am prone to forgetting certain details. I suppose the best I can do is offer a theory, and it runs somewhat against the point made so far - the problem with the way our brains store memories may not be a problem at all, it may be that the problem is the way we value factual accuracy. To put it another way, maybe we just forget things and that's fine; I don't need to remember everything I've forgotten. This isn't to dismiss the importance of accuracy. There are undoubtedly situations where having the facts 100% correct is the most important consideration, and of course in most other situations it seems reckless or just silly to suggest that the facts aren't so important. But the default perception seems to be that a great memory is defined by its ability to recall correct information - who says that's right?
I think the truth is that sometimes having the facts doesn't help us remember. I'm talking about the times when memory isn't so much about the past but rather the future, which can happen in situations where memory locks us into a pattern that makes it difficult to move forward. What does it matter in the end if I missed a few years of posting or running on July 12? The reality is that working out the way I feel in writing was endlessly valuable over these past few days, so whether it has a place in a long annual tradition or not is quite frankly of little relevance to me; what matters now is what I do next. And to be honest, can I really say for sure that I remember connecting with my mom about running? July 12 was seven years ago, and most of these conversations would have happened even further in the past. I'm open to the idea that I have once again misremembered, though I might actually be completely off the mark - my mom ran marathons, which is about as goal-driven as it gets for runners, so maybe those shared motivations are just another paragraph I've rewritten in the prequel to my next run. But I do know from experience, even if just three times in the past six years, that having a good run on this day is a priceless gift.
Or maybe, I should say that I know these things - the value of writing, the reward of a run - from memory. The fact that I remember doing these things, even inconsistently, on certain July 12's feels like a signal that there is something else about memory. I am beginning to sense that the value of memory is not just the recall of precious facts or its ability to rewrite the stories we tell ourselves in order to move on, but the ability to remember the things we can't forget. Tools like the journal may imply a desire to support the memory as it leaks facts, but what it actually does is more in line with this idea - the journal reminds me that I once survived a difficult time through writing, and I can't forget this.
With running, my memory doesn't even need a prompt like the journal. When I reflect on why running has its place today, I recall a conversation in that final week when I asked my mom what she dreamed about, and she said running. I think we'll forget almost everything if it means retaining the few things we can't forget, these moments resurfacing in the redundant sea of memory to remind me of what I already knew - that every road ahead is uncertainty, that no one ever gives up on a dream, and that small traditions are there when we need them, to lend us the resolve we need for moving forward, on those days when we can't quite do it on our own.
