Live to Relive
A rooftop meditation on memory, experience, and the moments we hope to relive.
The road beside me was covered in snow with a dozen distinct shapely footprints that headed downhill. The landscape before me was coloured with a white shade of sheer innocence and purity, and the wooden snow-capped houses that decorated the hilltop of Mt Sandakphu, provided a spectacular contrast. The azure-roofed cottage in the distance atop a tiny hill added to the magnificence of the place. The sun shone so brightly that day that its reflection on the thawing snow often glared my eyes. On my right stood the mighty Kanchenjunga as boldly as ever and unshrouded. As we trekked a few miles along the road downhill, the tall trees that forested both sides cleared out gradually to reveal the horizon that was governed by the forests and meandered by the snowy road. It looked like a black forest cake.
When I was actually living those moments, sure I was having one of the best times of my life, however, reminiscing to that memory somehow feels even better. You know why? I guess it can be roughly related to the human nature of ‘realizing the importance of something once it’s gone’. You see, when you are actually living in a moment, you rely on some or all of your five senses to accumulate the surroundings, to see, smell, hear, taste or feel the moment, as per your will. You have the freedom to watch the view from a different angle, to taste a different dessert, to smell a petal so hard such that the bug on it that was enjoying life, enters one of your nostrils, completely changing the theme of the memory.
Now that you are sitting alone to your thoughts on the rooftop beneath the starry skies, trying to get a break from the monotonicity of life, you start recalling those moments. Now you are at the sole mercy of your memory. Your mind can only replay what it could retain. You can no longer “change the angle”. You will only see what you had seen then and leave the rest to wonder. I think this fusion of that sight in your mind augmented by a smidge of imagination (which also fills the glitches in the memory), the nostalgia, and knowing that you just cannot be there at that exact moment makes the reminiscence more soothing. Also, assuming you don’t have an eidetic memory, the clarity of the retained memory would depend on how recently those events had taken place. There is a tiny exception however. There may be some moments that had occurred ages ago, but you can remember it crystal clearly. This happens when you have an emotion attached to it, but in most cases, this is something involuntary.
It’s not just the exquisite moments that we recall. During my middle-school days,there was this cartoon Avatar: The Last Airbender (a show whose influence upon me might persist until my last day) that used to air at 5:00 or 5:30 in the morning. I don’t remember missing a single episode of it (they never aired the final season though, thus jeopardizing a child’s curiosity, but thanks to Udayaditya Konwar (Boon Dada), may his soul rest in peace, for unknowingly satiating that thirst while I still craved to finish that show). I remember quietly switching on the TV (since I didn’t want to wake Aaita (grandmother) up), getting cozy under a blanket during those winter mornings and watching the show with sheer focus and amazement. We often feel nostalgic about things that may have been very ordinary and usual back when we were living it, but now that those days are gone, we are willing to sacrifice anything to crawl back to those simpler, old times, don’t we? . Then why take this moment for granted? Live it with all of your senses, with all possible “angles”, for today will soon become a part of the old, simpler times. Learn to live in the moment so that you can relive it better when it becomes a fragment of the past; for in the end, reliving is what you will live for.