The good, bad & ugly about memory

 The good, bad & ugly about memory 

A decade or more ago, I took up a question on the internet platform “Yahoo Answers”. The question was “what is your earliest memory?” 

I liked the question.

How do I pick the “earliest” one among those belonging to my kid_age, when the concept of age, date or chronology was yet to creep into me? ( This Was my first hurdle 😥)

Anyway, when I proceeded to dive deep into the past, a memory surfaced 🙂.

I recalled a struggle to move forward, using my arms upto my elbow, to reach out to the vastness of a shiny black surface ahead of me, pushing myself hard, using my left arm to pull myself forward, while the right one was just planted firmly under my chest to help the left arm. There was a success. The ‘surface’ was moving backwards below mentioned, but the target ahead kept increasing 😥. 

 I had to deduce, as a little grown up boy, to make out of this memory, that I must_have_been swimming on the floor…🤣.   I felt amused, at the limitations of the “impressions” and the info, offered by this piece of memory 🙂.

1.The visuals, helped me to ‘fix’ the probable place, time and activity.

2.The emotions experienced helped me to ‘fix’ the nature of the ‘situation' I faced😜

Armed with the analysis, I answered factually, but mentioning my ‘diagnosis’ separately to enable the asker to distinguish between facts and assumptions related.

My assumptions, as far as I am concerned, are also related to the facts with “data_integrity”...🤣.  I used both types of logic. Identifying the similarity with later memories related and using the elimination_process of other related possibilities.

I was below 8 months of age( I was reportedly able to walk unevenly at 10½ months itself 😜. The span of knee_walk must have been very brief, though no memory of it could be recalled)

Floor, because it felt too cold. Black and shiny, because it was black_oxide, very old and ill-lit. Light was from a solitary glass_attached tile on the roof. No electricity till the next 16 years. Either my mom's or my dad's birth house, since both had that large halls, which seem ‘vast’ for a baby with a limited range of vision🤣.  We place a toy a bit nearer to the baby when it doesn't respond to crawl towards it😜. Crawling was the ‘activity’, which means, it a ‘safe’ inference that it ‘ought_to_be’ my Earliest memory. ( Incidentally, mine got picked as the best_answer😂)

I am fortunate to be able to ‘recall’ quite a good number of stored data items, of my kid age. ( Very recently, I happened to tell a classmate “ you were the Expert among our classmates, who could sharpen a lead-pencil best🙏. We were in 4th standard (1960). And I had determined to learn it looking at you, which I did 🙏” He exclaimed “hey, man….what do you Eat, to have been able to nurture such a sharp memory???😳😳😳”.  I knew, he can easily Recall it, being good at that Job👍, though others had no deep emotions related, to remember this fellows ability!. My emotion was my conscious choice to strive towards acquiring that ability, using a Guru who demonstrated it, once in every 40 minutes 🤣. Teachers change every 40 minutes and subject_change was…..only a consequence, as_per my stunted kid_age_logic😓.

Mere logic related to any incident, fails to get a ‘prominent’ location in our storage hard_disk—--is what I deduced. 

Emotions, which are at a minimum requirement, for the process of “recall” to “access” that prominent location cell of memory storage chip, is indispensable.

Good emotions are dim and faint, beCause, happiness is internalised usually, and therefore the memories related brings only a blurred image of audio/vidio.

Bad ones are due to negative emotions, and obviously we externalised the “cause” of mismatch of ground reality with our expectations, desire etc. images are clearer, and better focused/zoomed-into the source of mismatch, like abuse, spanking, collision, pain_inflicting_object, etc👍. 

Ugly ones are a bit complex😜. We added our stupidity of conjured negative emotions to it, and recall a fictional horror story👍. It could even be a horrifying dream😜. A “dejavu”( whatever it means 😥😥)

I embarked upon learning “how to store so_sensibly, that I can recall at_will, what I ‘like’ to remember 🙏.( Futile to elaborate, since I don't know if it can work for others🙏). But I acquired the ability to recall meaningless numerals, alphanumeric forms etc effortlessly.  I saved the efforts of ‘writing’ an amount like Rs. 2,35,45,671.39 by learning to retain it in my “cache_memory” till I walk back to my table, 50 steps/2 floors away, to see if it matches with what I arrived at, to balance the book of accounts 🙏.  Page numbers of ledger accounts of frequent customers, I recall easily, at it saves my energy flipping pages of bulky ledgers. Ability to store+recall without any induced-emf was tough ( here, emf is my_accronym— emotional motivation force🙏….   Electro-Motive-F, etc😜)

Alas! I met my Waterloo, when it came to retaining a spiritual experience. The screen goes blank🙏😭😭😭.  Couldn't even ‘devise’ any tool😥. Had to be contented with the ‘contentment’ yielded by those experiences 🙏. ( After-effects, side-effects of spiritual experiences, seem to offer a Lollipop “buddy, your storage+ recall of all other inconsequential worldly ‘drama’ will be better than before 👍”. But the charm of this drama is fading away with spiritual bijness 😭)

Memorably yours,

psn( 10 Jan, 2026)