The Fragility of Memory

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The human heart and mind are exquisitely fragile. A single familiar scent, a fleeting melody, or a forgotten scribble can transport us back in time, leaving our physical presence stranded in the present while some other part of us wanders decades into the past.

It happened to me on an ordinary afternoon, walking past a jasmine tree. One breath of that scent and I wasn't on a street anymore i was a little girl, running circles around my neighbour's jasmine plant with my best friend, the two of us dizzy with laughter over nothing at all. The smell hadn't just reminded me of that time. For a moment, it was that time.

It happens with songs too. A tune I'd completely forgotten came on once, and before I even placed the name of it, I was back in a specific season of my life the exact stage I was at when I first heard it, the person I was then, half-formed and unaware of who I'd become.

And then there are the old journals. Flipping through one, I found goals I'd written years ago ,some laughably naive now, others so full of innocence they almost ache to read. But what struck me wasn't just the words. It was that I could suddenly recall the exact place and moment I'd written them: the light in the room, the feeling in my chest, the person I was pretending  or hoping  to become.

In the midst of life's routines, these moments ambush us, bridging past and present without warning. The boundaries blur, and for just a few seconds, we are not remembering , we are there, enveloped by feelings we thought we had outgrown.

Maybe that's the strange gift of memory's fragility. It's unreliable, easily shattered, impossible to summon on command  and yet, when it does return, uninvited, it hands us back pieces of ourselves we didn't know we had lost.

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