Wounds of Memory

 

 The moment that brings us joy now may one day become a painful memory. Once it becomes a memory, the more pain a moment causes, the happier that moment was.
  
 People don't suffer for the times that have passed, but for the memories those times have given birth to. What has gone doesn't cause pain—only its memory does. All our memories come and crowd into our heads, hammering away relentlessly, saying: I too was once alive! Look at me, see me! I was once with you, I still occupy so much of your life! Without me, you have no existence at all!
  
 When a beloved person leaves us, we feel worse thinking not about the person themselves, but when memories of our time together float up before our eyes, one by one. It's not people who make us cry—it's the memories of people.
  
 The more you try to forget memories, the more they crowd into your mind. The more you try to push them away, the closer they come to your heart. What greater destroyer is there than memory, capable of rendering all our preparations for living meaningless!
  
 Our entire life is an album of memories. Every moment of life is a reel that remains as a photograph on the pages of that album, vivid and clear. This very moment will become a memory of tomorrow or some distant time. What makes us cry today may make us laugh then. What makes us laugh today may make us cry then. Neither laughter nor tears are permanent—they don't stay, only life remains. Such is our life!
  
 When we say we can't forget someone despite trying so hard, what we actually can't forget are the memories we created with them. Only when a person becomes a memory do we understand what that person was in our lives! It's not easy to know and value people until we lose them. We buy people at the price of memory.
  
 Accepting that they left me is painful enough, but far more painful is having to feel this memory constantly—how they used to break down sobbing at the thought of leaving me! We both used to cry then—that was a moment. Now I cry alone—that's a memory.
  
 The separation that death brings is devastating, but what devastates even more than death itself is the truth that they once lived for me alone. Dying for such a person might be easy, but living while thinking of such a person is not easy at all.
  
 Many medicines are available to enhance memory, yet nothing but poison can be found to kill memory. Even those who cry about having weak memory carry some unbearable memories for years and years, despite their fierce unwillingness. Humans are terribly memory-stricken creatures. The less one can throw away memories, the deeper and darker the stains of anguish on their heart.
  
 Memories of sweet times become the sharpest of all. We float in present joy and weave future sorrow. Then one day, suddenly, on a rainy night, in melancholy twilight, in a blazing dawn, in a sun-soaked weary afternoon, in dizzy darkness, the beloved's face, smile, tears, touch become memories that strike continuously. Their favorite words, favorite songs, favorite moments, favorite food, favorite activities, favorite movies, favorite places, favorite poems—everything dear to that person becomes the stark body of memory, coming like sharp knives to cut every inch of our liver with perfect precision, utterly destroying us.
  
 We can burn all the letters they sent, destroy all the gifts they gave, tear up all the photographs with them, yet we still can't forget them and be well. The warmer the relationship was, the more painful the burning of memory.
  
 Humans are strange creatures. They cry even for deceivers—not that they cry without knowing, they cry very much even knowing. Even knowing someone will never change, people forgive the deceiver again and again, accepting everything and carefully keeping them in their hearts. When that deceiver finally delivers the ultimate blow and leaves, even then people cry searching through memories of them, praying for them. Humans are made not so much of flesh and blood as of memory. As much as they are human, they are even more dolls of memory. These dolls live in attachment, die in attachment.