A relevant memory

I realized it was a colossally stupid idea the moment I overreached for the thermometer and felt myself rolling into the water in front of me. I distinctly remember my green sweatpants and sweater becoming heavier as they soaked in the water. I remember thrashing around, the shallow waters feeling like an abyss when looking for a small eternity at the water’s surface already above my tiny head. I even remember the images of being pulled out of the water. Despite what could have been the end, I cannot say that this memory means anything to me, which bothers me.

Intuitively, I feel that every moment of my past should matter. The people I met, the things that I did and the experiences I had all should mean something. But it was not until recently that I realized the incident with the pool was — for the lack of a better term — irrelevant. My memory of the experience does not make me sad or happy, it does not make me realize life is short, and it does not make me appreciate pool safety. The experience happened, but the memory has not affected me.

I find that thought rather frightening: the possibility that much of the past does not matter, that aspects of my life do not even impact me. This is not my only memory that has no significance. There are many weeks spent bored at home, days sitting watching daytime TV to kill the time, hours spent staring out the window. All that time spent seems entirely wasted and meaningless, pointing to a lifetime far too empty of significance.

What is more, my memory is quite imperfect. I don’t remember exact feelings, just general emotions. Pain and hunger have mostly faded, as have joy and pleasure. I have forgotten the earaches I had as a child just as well as the taste of the hamburgers I ate.

So yeah, almost drowning does not seem to have affected me or to guide my current actions and is a mere blip in my past. For all the negatives I can throw at my own memory, it makes me wonder and worry: How many more irrelevant memories do I have?

I ought to be the biggest advocate for my life. I ought to be the one to say that not a moment can be changed without altering who I am. But my memory of the pool can be changed or forgotten, and I won’t be very different.

Admittedly, I cannot completely accept that argument either, since I know some of my memories do matter quite a lot. The cross-country races I do remember fill me with pride for finishing them. Eating only a box of Frosties for three days because I had wasted my money reminds me of the importance of frugality. The trepidation I felt first rolling into the Dinky station, having never been to Princeton before, reminds me to be nice to freshmen.

But even with these memories, the idea of so much of my life becoming meaningless to me is truly unsettling. I know that to a stranger, my life is probably meaningless. Finding each and every one of world’s 6.8 billion lives significant can be difficult, but finding one’s own life relevant should be easy, right?

All this reflection leads me to a question for the reader, now that the semester is wrapping up: What is worth remembering? How many of our experiences until now still matter to us? Have our lives been well spent? Everyone has something to strive for, and at this point, I am not interested in what that is, be it love, peace or money. In 40 or 50 years’ time, at the end of our careers, we will reflect on the lives we lived and ask ourselves if it was well spent. Fifty years of unimportant memories is a long time.

Hopefully, graduating seniors have by now planned out their lives enough to know what they want and how to get it. We may be too young for nostalgia, but we are not too young to realize that not all of our experiences will matter. As we try to define ourselves economically, socially and culturally, we will inevitably make sacrifices with our time. A sacrifice too many, however, would make for a meaningless, wasted life. The challenge, in the end, is figuring out how to make our own lives matter to us.

Christopher Troein is an economics major from Windsor, England. He can be reached at ctroein@princeton.edu.