The historian within

I remember writing once about memories. I believe it is more than once that the memories have filled me with all sorts of emotions in the world. Memories are very handy. They have their own house in your heart. I always felt that though memories sometimes soothe your mood, they can seriously disturb you at other times. Nonetheless, they make us what we are. They are the foundations that we live on.

Nowadays, there are so many different devices to capture the so many important moments. We have cameras, video recorders, and mobile devices. We capture so many moments. However, can we really capture the humanness that is attached to those moments? Can we really capture the sheer ease with which a flower blooms? 

There are wildlife photographers and enthusiasts who go out of their way to capture such fragile natural moments and movements, for example, animals yawning, flowers blooming, the movement of the trees, the turning of a caterpillar into a butterfly. The list is endless. I am still not sure whether these photos and videos can capture the delicate beauty of these moments. 

We take videos of human emotions as well. We capture numerous emotions crossing a person’s face as the individual experiences something heart touching. We try and keep record of everything from the childbirth to marriages to death. 

Now, with the mobile devices being easily available, we can start recording any time. However, can we keep track of everything? Can we really record what one goes through before saying yes to a marriage proposal? Can we ever capture the alone journey of a person going back to home after a wonderful and satisfactory completion of a project? We aim to write down, record, capture, compose, and in turn, express everything that we want to. However, so much remains to be captured. 

I always wondered what passes between two people when they touch, shake hands, pat, hug. Because with everyone, these things have different meaning and emotions attached to it. Even if we can capture someone patting the other, would we ever be able to understand what emotion was sent and received. A gaze of reassurance! Never can you capture the gaze of reassurance. It is one of the emotions which depends on the understanding of the two people—a person asking for relief and the other giving it. 

I never understood how we can grab a moment so intimate that when it will start and end cannot ever be predicted. We can capture crying eyes but we cannot tell the emotion that flows through them. This all is safe with the historian within because the mind is always recording everything that happens. Each thought, emotion, behavior, existence, and thing is noticed and noted. And when the mind decides to play a story in front of its eye everything is clear and well placed. The mind organizes deletes, saves, alters, and maintains all that is important to us and all that which someday may prove to be important. It even protects our dreams which definitely cannot be recorded. It knows when we had a knot in our throat which no one else noticed.

I salute to this great historian that is present within all of us. Howmuchever technology may develop, the historian would still exist and keep doing its work effortlessly and without failing.

Today, I want to just hold my historian tight and thank it for showing me movies of happy times when I was low and warning me about the negative during my euphoric fits. Love you and thanks for being there.