Belonging To Memories !

A friend in a disarming moment of guileless banter says the words, "I remember the time you...."

And you wait for them to lend you, what's yours. Your moment, your story being narrated back to you. But it's not yours anymore really. Not completely. It's their memory now.

It's a tad unnerving, yet somewhat flattering, being a part of someone else's memory.

We all are perennially in search of the perfect us. We like to paint ourselves prettier than we are. Very few have a Frida Kahlo in them ! 

But a place in someone else's memory robs us of our right to tell the story to our liking. It's a place you have no control over. It's an autocratic land where your story has been modified according to the whims of it's possessor. You are not only sharing your moments with their memory but you're also giving them the right to own it, alter it, judge it, like it, dislike it and most importantly forget it !

And yet, to imagine that someone has made a memory out of a moment you have lived, that perhaps you are oblivious to, fascinates me.

Never mind that not everyone has a certain Wordsworth stealing a mundane moment from their everyday work and making it a treasured memory worth inspiring a timeless piece of poetry !

But to think that someone somewhere remembers,say, your laughter and thinks of you, probably involuntarily, when they hear another one similar to yours, is indeed flattering. They are carrying with them something, that innately belongs to you. It has left a mark in their memory and for a moment you're with them even when you're not. You steal a moment from their intensely occupied schedule. Subconsciously perhaps, but a piece of your story has helped someone else make a memory. The romantic finds joy in this existential validation of his story, or at least a part thereof.

So, smile at a stranger. You'll never know how long he remembered it, but the slim chance that you made a memory in a person you'll never see again, donated a tiny bit of your story to be carried far beyond you can imagine, is intriguingly compelling.

A stranger I remember. A moment of joy she let me keep !