Memories, Shaping My Own Impressions

I’ve always looked at my memories and recollection of events as a stream of equally important parts, that piece together a story. I'm unable to choose one memory or event that changed my views on a cultural level. I can’t see them, alone, to be impactful. Many of the events and experiences I’ve encountered gradually build upon who I am as a person presently. The word “impactful” itself has subjective meanings, which is why I can’t consider things like past relationships, public social experiences, and exposures to inspiration to be impactful memories.

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve become more prone to replacing my thoughts with thoughts about my thoughts. Rather than looking at something like a past relationship at face value, I think more about how it changed my views on things. For instance, I’ve had friendships with people who end up having trouble with drug use, and as a result, I realized that I needed to avoid drugs as much as possible, because I’ve seen what addiction can do. Everyone has different approaches to their own thoughts, though. For example, some people choose to look at one occurrence and attach it to a major personality or view change. I’ve chosen to instead, look at everything from a more broadened perspective. Another key factor in the way I look at memories that have changed my views culturally, is that I try my best not to hold impressions towards them. There are good and bad moments, but they all helped me develop equally.

With every descriptor comes a subjective and an objective use – objectively, I have never experienced a moment that completely changed my morality or views on its own. For example, there have been many times where I’ve experienced embarrassment in public, or I did something that affected the way certain people looked at me, but these things never changed me completely. The word “impact” is defined as the effect or influence of one person, thing, or action on another. If I were to directly compare the memory of when I first took a college tour – something a lot of people would regard as a big moment in life – objectively, I wouldn’t say it was impactful. Sure, the tour significantly helped narrow down the options on where I wanted to obtain my degree, but so did many other factors.

Inspiration also plays a key role in what impacts us as people, and me especially. The smallest things can inspire a person. I'm a musician, so hearing one great song alone can make an impactful memory, so long as I continue to hold the song dear. Though, the problem with calling these types of memories impactful is that inspiration can come and go immediately, with the blink of an eye. At one moment, a song could propel me to write my own, but the next month, I don’t even like that song anymore and therefore don’t like what I created. The memory is no longer impactful. It’s important to identify whether an event or memory is impactful because it’s typically regarded as impactful, or if it legitimately does drive one to be a different person on its own. I have matured as a person because I have experienced, seen, touched and listened to many things in my past. Take the sight of something away from its atmosphere, and it’s not nearly as exciting as it once was.

I’d like to say I was shaped culturally by a multitude of tiny, minimal “impactful” moments, rather than being hit by one giant epiphany. Though, I’m different from everyone else, and everyone else is different from me. It’s certainly possible to have something hit you like a train, psychologically, and change you for the better. Like I’ve stated, however, I cannot see experiences that are normally part of life as impactful. It is how memories and ideas combine that makes a person different.