What if your whole memory was erased…

It is our memories and our past that make us who we are. Every morning, we wake up as the same person. God creates us every morning again, gives us consciousness, and we have all our memories in place telling us who we are, where we live, our past and our memories. The people we met, our family, our job, our memories are all the same. Thanks to God’s boundless beneficence, we don’t have to get used to or try to adjust to the people we see around or the house we live in every time we wake up.

Think about it for a second; you wake up one day and your whole memory is gone. You have no idea who you are or that you live in the house you wake up in or any idea who the people looking at you are. Think how you would feel if you had strangers telling you ‘I am your spouse’, ‘Mom, don’t you recognize me?’ and that all the details like the school you went to, the courses you took, your birthdate, your friends and your family are all lost irretrievably. Surely, losing your memory like that would be a great test for you but probably now you have a little bit more appreciation of this great blessing you have and will be more thankful for it.

“They said, “Exalted are You; we have no knowledge except what You have taught us. Indeed, it is You who is the Knowing, the Wise.” (Surat al-Baqara, 32)

People usually live their lives taking their memories for granted, not even realizing that it is an amazing miracle. They are not aware of the fact that they go through a sort of resurrection after sleep and that their memories are recreated completely after sleep. But the truth is that God creates every cell again each time, along with every bit of memory with it.

Did you realize how you remember your past when you are asked about it? All the information you’ve learned so far was turned into proteins called ‘memory molecules’ in the ribosomes. These protein molecules were turned into electric impulses and thus allowed millions of bits of information to be stored in your brain; you call that ‘your past’ and all this accumulation of data makes up your past. When you say ‘I remember’, you are retrieving that data stored in your brain. So when you are asked ‘Which school did you go to?’, you are given the relevant data about your school and only then you can answer.

If there were no such thing as a memory, what would happen? Our lives would be a mess, and since we don’t store the information we learn in our memory, we would have to learn everything from scratch every time we need it, just like a newborn baby.

People with short or long-term amnesia understand very clearly how difficult this can be. Those with short-term memory loss, or those who cannot remember what happened more than five minutes ago, will have to find their way home every single time. They will not remember which food upsets their stomach and they will eat it again only to fall ill once more. They will not remember the details about their loved ones, the lovely times they shared or their experiences, and this is not the worst part of it; they will be unaware of potential dangers they may face as they will be devoid of the past experiences that would give them a heads-up to those threats.

God protects people by giving them such a precious blessing called memory.- Harun Yahya

God protects people by giving them such a precious blessing called memory. God allows us humans to use our memories with a simple principle. People keep benefiting from this amazing blessing, yet most of the time, take it for granted. Memory is not crucial only for our social lives; we need it just as much in our education and careers as well. If it weren’t for our memories, we would have to learn even the simplest things like the alphabet and the multiplication tables over and over again. And we would have to learn everything we learned at school again when we start a job. For example, a lawyer would have to go through and reviews all the laws again, a doctor would have to peruse the medical books and a physicist would have to re-learn all the laws of physics. A person that does a technical job would have to learn everything all over again, because there would be no experience and no past memory helping him in doing his job. Therefore, memory is a great blessing bestowed on us by our Almighty Lord, and we should be profoundly – and properly – thankful for it.