This got me thinking on how photos and videos (and maybe also diaries and voice recording) are the only tangible connections we have to our memories and the experiences we’ve lived. If we lose these, it's now up to our memory to remember them, but as you grow older the capacity for these memories begins to reduce, and only a few make it to the very end.
Memories are what give people a story, a background, and what help us grow as people. If we don’t record an event in our lives with photos, videos, voice recordings, or even a small piece of writing to describe it, and in the future we forget it happened, then we have no way to be remembered that it did, and it might as well haven’t. We wouldn’t have stories to tell to others about adventures that we had many years ago, or frustrating experiences that we’ve learned a lot from. However, should we forget about many things in our life, but have photos, videos, etc. to help us remember, then we’d also remember the good time we had (or the bad time), what we learned, people we met, new things we tried, and many other possibilities that are really worth keeping in our memories for all our lives. Tangible memories are like external hard drives that help us keep other things in our minds, and still be able to remember others when we wish to.
Keeping memories helps us remember great adventures that we’ve lived. It allows older people to be able to think of other things, and whenever they want, revisit those past events that had been replaced in their memories. It also allows us to remember times when we made mistakes, and thus help us learn from them. Our memory has limited storage, more so as we grow older, and because of that we need to keep some memories in other places outside of our minds, because they’re constantly being removed to make room for newer ones. It’s important to keep hold of our memories because they hold the best and worst stories of our lives, and if we have to learn from our mistakes, don’t there have to be mistakes to learn from?