I saw an interesting thought experiment on Reddit today. It asked "Who are you without memory?"

The question is intriguing because everything we experience ever is memories. The real events have happened microseconds before the brain registers it and translates it to sensory input, upon which the mind constructs images in the mind. Images such as touch, smell, sound, taste, sight. No sensory input is ever experienced directly, but only as an interpretation of what happened constructed in the mind, based upon a memory of the event, which may or may not have happened in actuality.

I think, if there was no memory, we would not experience anything at all. If all the processing in the brain ceased, no sensory imagery would remain. All that would be left at that point, would be silence and potential for happenings to occur. In that state, no time could pass because there would be nothing there to process and interpret the passing of time as "boredom" or "excitement" or anything else we experience it as. Time as lived experience depends on contrast and comparison. Boredom, anticipation, excitement, waiting, all require memory to register change.

I think the thought experiment is correct in that it points us towards our real self. Boundless, infinite potential for becoming. That such a thing should happen as the universe from that infinite potential for becoming, is nothing short of a miracle.

If memory constructs the self we usually identify with, then what remains without it isn’t a better story or a truer personality. It’s pure capacity. Openness. The condition for anything to appear at all.