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Proyecto Visión 21

Who am I, the one I once was or the one I am now?

Francisco Miraval

When you meet again somebody you haven’t met in a long time the meeting has an interesting effect: you are not only meeting your old friend, but you are also meeting your old self, you are meeting you all those years ago. Hence, the question stated above: Who am I, the one I was in the past or the one I am now? The answer is neither simple nor obvious.

I recently met one of my old friends and, after the meeting, a thought previously unthought by me was now clear to me: the “self” I once was before leaving my native country is not aging. I am, of course. In other words, I am being remembered by my old friends as I was at the time of our last meeting, not as I am today.

It is amazing to discover that in the minds and memories of a few people I still am a teenager and that’s the extend of the information and knowledge they have about me, as if all those decades since that time have never occurred. Yet, many things have happened since then, which means that, paradoxically, my old friends know more about my old self than I know and remember.

The situation is similar (but not identical) to what happens when parents tell stories to their children about the early years of those children and the children begin to discover they were alive before they could remember they were alive.

In our time, almost everything a child does will get immediately posted in several social media sites. It seems that every aspect of childhood is being documented. Yet, just a few decades ago, with the exception of a few pictures, the only connection with our early childhood was our parents’ memories.

Children are usually also amazed when they discover that their parents were alive before them and that they (the children) know nothing or almost nothing about their parents “previous” life.

And perhaps, in this search for forgotten or unknown memories still alive in somebody else’s mind, we can move beyond personal memories at different times of our lives and beyond intergenerational memories to include all humankind.

I still remember the first time I read a book about prehistory. I was still in elementary school and the book was old and had gray covers. It also used complicated words, such as “Paleolithic” and “Neolithic.” Reading it, I was amazed to discover we don’t know the whole picture about our own ancestors.

In other words, in the same way that my personal memory and my family’s memory is limited, our “humankind” memory is also limited. Very limited. In the same way I can’t remember my own childhood, we can’t remember the “childhood” of humankind.

So, who are we, the ones we are now and who we seem to know and remember, or the ones we were before and who we have forgotten? And if we have forgotten our own past, whose mind is still remembering it?

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