My earliest memory is the feeling of being confused. It was my third birthday. I remember walking through my basement, then out the open garage door to a driveway populated with mini cardboard houses in the process of being painted. I was told not to touch them because they were still wet. My 10-year-old brother had a smock on, a paint roller in hand, and, I think, a large amount of blue paint on him. My family was in the middle of prepping for my third birthday party. It was cowboy-themed, so, of course, my mother had commissioned my older brothers and my father to make a wild west town out of our driveway. That is my earliest memory.
Each memory is a connection to a person, place, thing or idea; a noun. A memory is a record of our experience of the past. It’s not a snapshot or a moment in time frozen in our minds. It is richly colored by the variables of the moment, like our mood, other people’s mood, the amount of caffeine in our system, and so forth.
Our memories are easily affected and are never completely accurate representations of events. When I actually walked out the garage before my third birthday party, I probably wasn’t extremely confused. I was probably a little confused, just like any other three-year-old. And now my memory has been overwhelmed by that feeling. I remember “confusion” more than anything else. Who knows, my brother might not even have been covered in that much blue paint.
Our memories are a window back in time to another part of our lives, how we once experienced the world. But they are not merely about the past. They shape our outlook on the present and the future. Our past actions and interactions influence current actions. Memories are the connections to places, ideas, things and people. Having memories connects. If there are no shared memories, there are no connections. In the words of Daniel Nayeri, the author of a wonderful book called Everything Sad Is Untrue: “The space between zero and one is all the world and everything in it.” Two individuals can go from having nothing connecting them, to the potential of their souls growing closer together. The potential is unbounded in growth that occurs individually and together when there is simply one shared memory. Even one memory means we have something in common. Something we can talk about. Something to help us relate. Having at least one shared memory is a necessary foundation for friendship.
Aristotle defines perfect friendship as mutual recognition, mutual well-wishing, and mutual delight in common activities with each other. Achieving perfect friendship is not an easy task. But before considering a friendship perfect, there must be a connection. In his Confessions, Augustine states that “…we should not love it unless we have some knowledge of it.” To work toward the noble goal of perfect friendship we must already be bound together in some way.
We are bound by our memories. We have forged cords that keep us connected. In the years to come, these cords can get tangled, strained and snapped by the nature of moving forward. Yet, the cords of our friendships will get stretched by miles and time. I entrust both you and I with our shared memories. I trust us to keep them from fading. I trust us to prevent these cords from snapping. So that when we cross paths in the near and distant future, we can pick up right where we left off.
As we move through an intrinsically transitive and formative period of life, forming memories with those around us in order to be molded into the person we will be for the remainder of our lives. Time spent together and activities completed in common will help build these connections. But to go beyond the present activities, to strengthen the bonds, friends ought to also open the door to the past. In relating stories of the past, an individual relates their memory to another. This then becomes a shared memory, a shared experience and understanding that strengthens the bond between individuals. Forge these memories, and reinforce them with the relation of stories.
