Saving Memories

December 15.

It was the last week of my time in Ithaca, home to my alma mater Cornell University. Omicron rapidly spread through campus after Thanksgiving Break. It was the end of finals week, graduation was just cancelled, and I was preparing to move out.

I don’t know if it’s just me, but when I spent my last 4.5 years in college, I acquired a lot of STUFF. Free t-shirts, Cornell merch, Secret Santa gifts… you name it. I also had a lot of things that I brought with me to school when I moved in as a first year. Clothes, notebooks, pens and pencils, etc. Lots of stuff.

And I had to go through all of it and figure out what I was going to bring with me on a plane or feasibly ship home through the USPS.

I only had 1 large suitcase, 1 small carry-on suitcase, 1 swimmer backpack, and my normal backpack. For the amount of stuff that I had, this wasn’t enough space to bring all of it back home. As I went through my entire room, going through everything, each item I looked at brought back memories.

Each red t-shirt that I owned brought back memories of participating in the marching band. Each piece of company merch I owned took me back to in-person career fairs I had attended. Every notebook and sheet of paper filled with notes and written homework reminded me of all of my classes. There were so many memories in each of these items, and I couldn’t bring it all.

I ended up throwing out a lot of my stuff — some of it was given away to friends and left behind for housemates, but most of it ended up tossed into the dumpster.

When I thought about each physical item and the memories that I associated with them, I also considered the possibility of a picture of that item. A picture to represent that I had that item. Something that I could store digitally and wouldn’t take up anymore space than a few 1s and 0s on my phone.

It’s been said many times that to live life in the moment, it is better to not take pictures and to fully immerse oneself into an experience. However, in this case, the moments are long gone and I am relying on objects (digital or physical) to spark a memory in my brain. Thus, I had found the value of a photo. I could toss away my red t-shirt and still remember the associated event with a picture.

Objects can hold memories, and if we’re efficient with the way we select the form of that memory, we can have more space to make new ones — in our heads and outside of it.