In Memory of Identity - Part 3

Continued from Part 2

People who have severe memory loss challenge our ideas about identity. They force us to consider that our identity isn’t as solid and constant as we wish to believe. If this wasn’t the case, we wouldn’t grow. Change would be impossible and we wouldn’t be able to adapt. Life without change leads to an inevitable death. There is no escaping that fact.

Buddhism talks about the principle of dependent arising which is relevant to this reflection on memory and identity. For while we may deem people having memory loss as suffering, 

we experience suffering ourselves as we witness another human being fading into oblivion. It’s undeniable that the person experiencing memory loss may be going through a nightmarish existence where nothing makes sense any more.

Yet, the more I contemplate this reality, the more I realise how I, myself, don’t exist without a frame of reference. We exist in relation to others. We define ourselves in relation to the world around us. Our identity is not absolute and is in a flux. A single experience, a word, or even a piece of music, can alter our sense of self. And we can’t even claim to be self-made as we’re tempted to do in a Western society preoccupied with independence and individuality.

For in truth, the memories that remind us of who we are or we think we are have been shaped by our friends, family, society, history, culture, language and many more. Our contribution to our identity becomes significantly limited. But, we have the most important tool in our mind. We can choose to remain passive and complacent or learn to cultivate awareness. 

Many times, I notice that people go on living as if their life was immortal. They take life for granted without opening their minds to the world around them. We are sometimes too concerned with preserving the memory of our identity when, in fact, the self is only the product of many processes working together to create an illusion of self. A self dependent on our senses, our perceptions, on our histories and the context we’re living in. Ultimately, we hold all this together thanks to a memory that, as a product of mind, is also prone to decay.

Continues...