Are We Defined by Our Memories?
"Water never stays where it is put."
— Try Again Tomorrow by Liana Flores
I was walking by a lake listening to her music and that lyric struck me: Just like the downstream of a river, I am never the same as I was a second before. Time flows endlessly, carrying fragments of who I was, shaping who I am, and influencing who I will become.
Time has a way of reshaping everything, especially memories. When I think about love, I realize it changes depending on where I stand in the flow of time. When I was in it, love felt immediate, the joy, the struggles, the small moments that somehow felt monumental. But after love has passed, my memories of it are different. They feel distilled, like fragments of a dream that are sharper than reality ever was.
I find it strange how memory works, it can be both a gift and a curse. It allows me to hold onto love long after it’s gone, but it also creates a version of love that may not be entirely true. I find fleeting moments often feel more meaningful in hindsight, perhaps because they are finite.
Time doesn’t just preserve love, it reshapes it. Memory isn’t a perfect record of what happened. It’s more like a story I keep rewriting, unconsciously editing to fit the narrative I want to believe about myself and the people I’ve loved. And funny enough, I had this thought when I was on the skytrain:
If my memories are unreliable, why do I trust them to define who people are?
"Love isn’t something we invented. It’s observable, powerful. It has to mean something. Maybe it means something more—something we can’t yet understand. Love is the one thing we’re capable of perceiving that transcends dimensions of time and space."
— Dr. Brand, Interstellar
Without memory, I wouldn’t know who I was yesterday or why I care about the things I do today. But memory is selective, and time decides what stays and what fades. Who I am today isn’t the same as who I was a year ago because the memories that define me have shifted.
And I think there’s something both terrifying and liberating about that. It’s terrifying because it means I might lose parts of myself that feel essential. But it’s liberating because it means I’m not bound by the past. I can grow and change, becoming new versions of myself as time flows on.
Every moment, every experience, leaves an imprint, shaping me in ways I may not even realize. I am always in motion, always becoming. The person I am today is the result of countless moments, both remembered and forgotten. Time carries me forward, shaping me, reshaping me, and leaving behind fragments of who I was.
I remember this word sonder that my friend Narae once shared with me as we stood together on the White Rock pier, with the ocean before us. She explained how it’s the realization that every passerby, every stranger walking past carries a life as vivid and intricate as mine. I watched them, comprehending that they all have a unique experience even under the same sunset.
Each of them, with their own joys, their own heartbreaks, their own tangled web of memories. And yet, even as time moves forward in the same steady rhythm for us all, it feels different, measured not by the ticking of a clock but by the emotions we tie to it. For some, the moment lingers like a slow tide; for others, it rushes past like a fleeting wave. Time, I realized, is not just a unit. It’s a feeling.
Sometimes I wonder if I am nothing more than the sum of what I can remember, a mosaic of memories pieced together from the past. And I think about this exact moment now, as I sit here, as I breathe, as I exist. One day, I won’t remember it. One day, this moment will slip away, lost to the endless flow of time.
So what gives life value? Is it worth anything if it will eventually disappear, if it will fade like a dream I can no longer recall?
Perhaps the meaning of life isn’t to hold onto the past, but to embrace the flow, to love, to remember, to let go, and to become.
"Days seem sometimes as if they'll never end
Sun digs its heels to taunt you
But after sunlit days, one thing stays the same
Rises the moon."
— Rises the Moon by Liana Flores
