Memories helped to make me, me. I guess this is a true statement for most people. Everyone is aware that their personalities have grown and changed since they were born. In a way people are like seeds when they are born. They are all a little different but also a little bit the same. Memory is that fertilizer that helps us settle and spread our roots into the ground and reach for that unknown future that is the sky.

I think it was my grandmother that started this particular train of thought. I see her as she is now and remember how she was before. My grandma was and is a very kind soul brought up in a different time period, a different way of life. The stories from my father and my own stories of when I stayed there over the summer made me realize the different type of love a grandparent can have for a child and for a grandchild. That aura of love I felt when I stayed over at her house has changed a little bit now that she has contracted Alzheimer?s or whatever memory-affecting disease she lives with. Whenever I see her now my heart cries the tears my eyes never did until I started writing this hopefully excellent example of a personal essay. My ardent wish is that life for her soul now is like a wispy dream, so that when she wakes up in whatever next life she is born into, my grandmother will forget whatever she is currently experiencing.

Loss of memory is like a loss of self. It is kind of interesting, I tell myself I am afraid of losing my memory but I know deep down I am not. Backwards, isn?t it? I believe it is because I have always been a matter-of-fact person in my own way and that I realize that contracting a disease like that is like death, it is a natural, inevitable part of life. I have already accepted that I will die and that chances are because of genetics that I will also lose myself when I am older.

Meditating on my grandmother and her disease, on myself, and on my feelings helps me to realize my own fears. To me, the understanding of fear is the birth of courage. Like when I skip rocks (a very time-consuming hobby of mine) the situation of my feelings about my grandmother skipped around until a new thought formed for me; I realized that I am afraid to lose control of myself. Why do I act one way in front of some people, and totally different in front of others? It is one of those questions quietly nagging me from the back of my head. Everyday I meet new people, I remember. Every time I associate with someone I know and feel that inhibiting presence in myself, I remember. This is something I have noticed since I was maybe 11 and I still haven?t changed. It still annoys me, but I guess it?s just another one of those many, many silent reminders that I am far from perfect.

That was one little stream of thinking that was inspired during my fatal journey into self-revelation. I know that memories are part of what makes people grow and evolve, but this thinking of the past has gotten me inspired. The Philip speaking to you is not the Philip who wrote this essay, nor the Philip who applied to college, nor the shy 11 year old who sought to find himself. The me that I remember in middle school and high school has the same basic foundation that I do, but we are definitely separate persons. I dress differently, I like totally different types of music than back in the 90?s, and I am quite far away from thinking that ?girls have cooties!? In all seriousness, those versions of me have died a long time ago. The people of the past cannot even live on in our memories because memories conflict with each other. My memories of my 6 year old self is vastly different than the 6 year old boy that my parents knew and raised. Even I did not truly know what type of person I was back then, so he is really dead in all senses of the word. Like a picture in some painting, I can appreciate that being but never truly know it. The point I am trying to come to is that we die everyday. You can even loosely compare the peaceful drifting into the realms of sleep to a funeral and the rising with the sun your rebirth into this world (minus the blood, yucky umbilical cord, and constant screaming). Well, I won?t lie to you, sometimes I am pretty pissed when I wake up but that is a totally different type of yelling. It is true that the loss of memory is a loss of self but when you imagine that you lose and find yourself everyday of your brief stay on the earth, it takes some of the pressure away.

I've talked about memory being a part of you and about losing yourself. Maybe you have understood what I have been trying to say about my views on life and how you are the blazing phoenix risen from your own ashes. Now I?m going to give an example or two of other, more specific things you may have lost or forgotten. Please remember that I am only human and even then, more prone to error than most. Do you remember the first time you realized that you weren?t going to live forever? That your loving, nurturing parent-figure wasn?t going to stay with you for all of time? Let me ask you, do you remember the first time you saw your own blood and felt those pain receptors shocking your brain into alertness? Those types of things seem to me like they should be a type of turning point in a developing mind, something cherished because they instigated a change in your existence. I don?t have the faintest idea of when I learned those facts but the fact that I can?t remember makes me wonder how important memory can be to me.

I?m beginning to believe that the things I remember are most likely things that mean something to the person I am now. When I see someone I?ve just met before I am hit by a rush of feelings and impressions of what this person means to me. The soft touch of a loved one sets my blood racing and my stomach churning because my body remembers. Facts aren?t as important to me as feelings; my knowledge has served a less useful purpose than my feelings and emotional intuition. For example, I easily forget the name of a person I met just the other day but I instantly know if they are kind, shy, trustworthy and I may even begin to start guessing their outlook on life. Someone special to my heart can make my body react in unexpected ways even though I may not be able to remember the last time we met or talked. Knowing this about myself is like knowing my fears, it stimulates my growth into new realms of feeling and understanding.

Whenever I meditate on who or what I am I start with one core thought and branch out into several interrelated tangents. I began today with the memory loss of my grandmother and spread into different areas of thinking: I realized that I am not afraid of losing my memory, that I am really afraid of losing control over myself, that the me yesterday is not the me today, the fact that most people cannot remember things like when they realized that they were going to die, and my last and final revelation is what kind of things I do remember. It is helpful that I listed all my points because I already forgot about the bulk of them! While it may seem unrelated, there is one thing I wanted to impart by making my private writing public. Never let your fears surprise you, never let the past hold you back, and always remember what is important to you. If you keep this in mind I believe that it will be easier to wake up in the morning dreaming of something precious.