Memory

Without memory there'd be no pain. If we were created without the ability to remember we'd never feel sadness for more than a moment. Never know loss for more than a second. We'd be ghosts. Cameras without film. Seeing life through the lens, but unable to retain the images. There would be no ache. No missing what is gone. We wouldn't even know it was.

Everything. Every emotion would last for only its natural duration. And when it was over we would move on as if it had never happened. Because for all intents and purposes in our minds, it never really would have.

We wouldn't be able to recall the good either. Though it might have happened. We'd know it as it occurred, but thereafter it would vanish. Lost to our minds like wisps of smoke to the ceiling of a bar.

Everything. Every emotion only existing in the space allotted it. No longer. No less.

There'd be no artists. No poets. Only people living the moments they are given.

It wouldn't be a beautiful world. But it wouldn't be an ugly one either.

Memory is the reason for all our pain. All our sadness. And yet, still, more often than not, it is the only joy we have left.

I just wonder if I'd be better off not knowing how kind life once was.