I wasn't able to sleep last night. I don't really know why. I was just full of 'awakeness', if that's a something at all. I know I should use the word 'wakefulness', because that is actually a word, but anyways. We all know what I mean, because at some time or the other, we've all experienced it.
During these fits of wakefulness, I'm usually finding myself thinking all sorts of things. Not that I'm not thinking all sorts of things throughout the day, but at this time, when all you can do (other than sleep) is think, that's when you enter a realm where thoughts don't usually tread.
I absolutely love thinking. I can never get bored because of thinking. Last night, for example, I was thinking about thinking. And how it was almost a physical feeling, of being able to mentally create pathways and open up portals to places, worlds, and discoveries that we'd never have done if we just closed our minds to thinking.
Sounds a bit strange, I know, how can a mind stop thinking? But through the many years my thinking self has sniffed at scents searching for whatever it is that a thinking mind searches, I've encountered so many people who really don't let their mind think. It baffles my own mind, because it's just so hard to comprehend how anyone at all could just not think.
Anyway, to the point of what I was thinking last night. I was amazed at the mind's ability to record things and the ability to open up that preserved memory years later - revealing an entire memory of events, or places that we would not have looked at twice but for something somehow unlocking that memory years later. The amazement with which I recalled this memory had me mesmerized by how many more little memories we may have all locked up in our mind, and how there are an infinite number of doors and windows waiting for us to reopen and remember.
This memory lead me onto another memory of myself, years ago at the age of 8, trying to locate my thick book on Dinosaurs frantically, while the rest of the family waited at the front door before leaving to go to some function. I knew it couldn't be somewhere hard to find, because this book - as big as any good version of an encyclopedia - was my bible at that age, and consequently it was always at hand. But for some reason, just when I needed it, I could not find it.
What I very distinctly remember doing is closing my eyes and retracing my steps regarding where that book could have been. I stood there at the doorway of my room, eyes closed as my inner self detached itself and rewinded through the steps I had taken to get where I was. I opened my eyes and lo and behold, the book was right there on my desk, underneath a pile of papers filled with math equations. I happily hugged it to myself and raced down the stairs.
There are two things I simultaneously thought when I recalled this memory. My mind branches out in so many paths just from a single thought, that it's hard to keep up with all of it, and wouldn't you know, half these thoughts don't reach the surface of my consciousness, and sink back into a shadow, so that some time later, something happens, a thought crosses my mind and suddenly it feels like deja vu.
One thing I thought was - if I were to share this memory with someone, one reaction from this individual would be 'How come you haven't told me this before?'. Now, this isn't what they literally would say, but this reaction comes once again from my cache of memory. That, once they actually had said this, and it made me consider how there was constantly things I'm recovering from this cache, things that I don't even recall knowing or remembering. So many memories, where every second is recorded, over days, months, years, that there is a lifetime of memories, or memories of memories to account or recount. So even with a person who knows you inside out, over years, one day you can come out with something you've never realized was part of you.
And one of the greatest ways of triggering these memory releases is by our interaction with others.Just in the same way I was amazed by the way I suddenly recalled a place from many years ago which I wouldn't have realized was the same place this person was speaking about had they not mentioned it.
This brings me to the second thing I thought, following the Dinosaur Book memory. A memory that made me recall a younger self with fondness, almost as if that version of me was actually another child I had just met. Even at a very young age, I was fascinated with knowledge. I wanted to know everything in the whole entire world. The year before, in Grade 2, I memorized everything I could about the planets, space, astronomy. I consumed all this amazing information with such an appetite that I couldn't help but want more. Family members who knew me didn't gift me dolls or toys, they gave me books. The Dinosaur Book, the Book on Science, The Encyclopedia of Biology, A Thousand Facts About The World....it isn't any wonder that by the end of the next year, my teacher told me that I most likely would be needing glasses.
My love for knowledge, for information, for reading, was a way for me to enter worlds I would never have believed existed. The more I knew about the world, the more I was able to learn about myself. The magic of getting lost in a novel, of living the experiences of characters, of considering the situations and what decisions or reactions I myself might have made, of relating, understanding more about who I was - it all translated into how I was able to be a better person for those around me.
A night's wakefulness isn't always a bad thing, when I awoke early the next morning, before the alarm-that-never-gets-to-ring rang, I felt absolutely and entirely rested. I felt at peace with myself and I really didn't know why. Sometimes a good think does that for you, you embrace old memories and thoughts almost with a caress you'd reserve for a collection of precious possessions or for a lover, and sometimes you feel an inner 'awakeness', a shot of life that goes from neuron to neuron at speeds so fast it's almost imperceptible.
