The Importance of Memory Essay -- Personal Narrative Writing

The Importance of Memory I remember lying in my bed one night when I was six years old, staring at the ceiling in the darkness, covers pulled up to my chin, thinking, Someday, Ill wake up and Ill be twenty years old. And someday Ill wake up and be forty. What will I look manage? What will I be doing? Will I be adroit? Will I remember what it was like to be six?Memory has always been a concern of mine mainly, is mine deficient somehow? Everyone else takems fit to remember the minutiae of their childhoods, while mine seems mostly fuzzy at best. Sometimes Ill get little snatches of an image or a feeling, summoned by something Ive seen or smelled or heard, or sometimes a memory will just float to the surface, unasked for. And other times, Ill consciously try to fight up a particular scene or moment, but my efforts are unsuccessful more often than not. Im twenty-one. Im probably a foot and a half taller and twice as heavy as my six-year-old self. Im in school, reading and writing a lot, laborious to figure out my life, wondering (still) what forty will be like. Sometimes Im happy, sometimes Im not. I aim for mirth now, mostly.This is what I remember. Im in first grade. My teacher is Ms. Schultz. She would make the perfect grandmother a bit chubby, short silvery-blonde hair, smiling blue look that crinkle in the corners, and a wardrobe consisting primarily of pink and purple sweatshirts, all cute-fluffy-animal-themed. Her face is so soft-looking I want to reach up and skin senses it. She likes blue eyeshadow. Im good at first grade. The other kids like my drawings. I know not to color the sky as a one-inch blue strip at the top of my paper. I like drawing horses and unicorns and Pegas... ... and whites. I race raindrops as we coast along the highway. I guess I remember more than I thought.People tell me its a terrible tendency I have sometimes of focusing on the past. They say, You should abide in the now. They insist, You should enjoy the p resent. I feel guilty at first, but I smile to see through the eyes of a six-year-old again. The guilt slides international easily because I know not to let a cloud of memories obscure the present, to freight the moment with past regrets. Instead, I use my memories to elevate my experiences now, to see everything around me with greater clarity. The past gives every moment a little more meaning. To me, it seems critical to know where and whence I came from, how I came to be like this, to think the way I do or act the way I do. Memory offers a claim of permanence, a means of positioning myself in time and in space.