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You’re Here to Make Moments, Not Memories

There is a stark and stellar difference, my friend

By emPublished 2 years ago 5 min read
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You’re Here to Make Moments, Not Memories
Photo by Cassiano Psomas on Unsplash

“Let’s make some memories.”

That’s what it’s all about, right? Doing this, creating that, experiencing this, living that. We live that so we can look back on it. We do so that we can remember it. We experience so that we can learn from it. We create so that we have a reminder of what we made and who we were.

They always tell us to make memories — good ones, specifically. Our iPhone captures them. Our journal logs them. Fallout Boy is thankful for them. And I get it, I really do.

We make memories to remember them.

But that’s just f*cking stupid.

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Making memories is like writing a book

You create it with the intention of it one day being read — you don’t write it for the sake of writing it. And reading a book is like glimpsing history; seeing the pages that you wrote all that time ago, something you did then (the writing, the editing) being witnessed now (the reading, the experiencing).

That’s what memories are. Remembering implies the past.

You can’t remember something that’s in the direct present, whilst you’re in the middle of living it. Making memories means living, doing, creating, experiencing — so that you can look back on those moments.

But tell me this: how often do you?

How often do you read through your old journals? How often do you sit on a bench, lakeside, and reminisce? How often do you remember that exact thing you did on that exact day, exactly, all those years ago?

Sure, we scroll through our camera roll whilst waiting for the train. We chat about old times with our mates over lunch. We think about certain milestones and core memories that are ingrained into our soul in specific moments that remind us of life — and that’s so beautifully crucial.

But that’s not enough.

That’s one hour, here and there. The rest, though? What are we remembering then? In all the other moments when we’re not sifting back through our memory bank? What are they?

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They’re exactly that: they’re moments

Moments are what we’re living: right now. They’re not flashbacks and hindsights and “remember when?”’s. They’re this. This very thing you’re inside of right here. They’re now.

They’re the present.

They’re today.

Moments are us, living life live-action, in real-time, right this second.

They say “live in the moment,” when we’re busy thinking about the future or fretting about the past. But in a literal sense, the moment truly is all we have. We cannot live anywhere but here.

So why are we always trying to make memories when we could just be making moments? Why are we living them just so we can talk about them at a later date, when we could instead be enjoying and embracing and experiencing the here and now?

Why should we do all this stuff, live all this life, simply in aid of remembering it?

Sure, it’s nice to tell tales to our grandkids and reminisce about anniversaries on important dates — but think about it.

One day, we’re all going to die.

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All of us. Every single one

Ourselves and our friends, our family, our Twitter followers, those who hold any remaining memory of us — dead.

We can only remember our memories for as long as we live, until we ourselves become a memory. Then, in a hundred years time or so, we won’t even be that. We’ll be forgotten.

And if we’re lucky — or a political knobhead — we’ll be remembered for a little while longer throughout history. But generations will die out too. Textbooks will fade. More history will be made to trump our own. Life will continue on without us.

Until it doesn’t.

Humanity will end. The Earth will die. The sun too. Along with it all of our diaries and Instagram’s and love letters will be destroyed. All our creations and documents and wanderings. All our fingerprints, stray hairs, kisses against window panes. Everything we’ve touched, everything we’ve ruined, everything we’ve done: will be gone.

There will be nobody left to remember us. And nothing left to remember.

But that has never been the point, now has it?

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We’re not here for the memories, we’re here for the moments

Don’t you get it?

Life isn’t about looking back on it. Life isn’t a museum to reflect inside of. Life isn’t even a story in the sense that you think: because you’re the author, not just the reader. You’re not writing it to one day read it back. You’re writing it, to write it. You’re living each day with each stroke of the pen on the page. Whether you flick back through those chapters or not, you live them as you write them.

Ironically, that’s one thing we need to remember:

Life isn’t important because we can remember it: it’s important because it happened.

That’s it. That’s all.

This day, this project, this milestone: it’s important because it’s happening. It’s important because it exists. Whether or not anybody knows about it. Whether or not it’s celebrated. Whether or not it’s ever mentioned again.

This moment is the best moment of your life because it’s the only moment you have — the one you’re in — and it’s happening.

Right now.

Today.

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Let’s face it, you can never remember every moment of your life

What did you have for dinner three Thursday’s ago? What did you say to your nan at 9am on her birthday in 2012? What were you thinking in the middle of the night that one Pancake Day when you were 7?

Chances are you can’t remember. Doesn’t make that moment any less worthwhile, though, right?

Why?

Because it happened. It existed. And so do you.

But you don’t exist to “make memories” you exist to make moments. Life is immortalised inside of them — whether or not they’re remembered. Stop living for your future self to remember your past. Live for your present self, right here in the present. Make moments for the sake of making them.

Live for the now. Live for the here. Live for today. It really is all you have — and it’s all you’ll ever need.

So, you.

“Let’s make some moments.”

self help
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About the Creator

em

I’m a writer, a storyteller, a lunatic. I imagine in a parallel universe I might be a caricaturist or a botanist or somewhere asleep on the moon — but here, I am a writer, turning moments into multiverses and making homes out of them.

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