Dreams...
When I registered to the Association of Personal Historians, I wanted to find a business name quickly. MemoriesDream came quite easily to my mind. Many Personal Historians choose very nice names and if I wanted to find something so explicit, I had to find something not already used. In the other hand, I wanted something less conventional, more metaphoric, quite oneiric. MemoriesDream came to my mind because I was always been intrigue by the virtual aspect of our memories: what is the difference between a dream and a memory? While you are sleeping, your dream is like living at present. When you are awaken, the dream is something you remember in your brain in quite the same way as you remember your memories. Some things may prove that you really experienced in your life a memory that you now display in your brain.
But you have other ways to revive your memories and make them real.
You can go to the place where you experienced this memory, 10 or 20 years before. You will see the monuments, the streets all the things like if you were alive in a dream.
You can take in your hands one of these photos, one of these little souvenir you bought, as a happy-naive-candid tourist, or take something else which has no value or is even quite ridiculous, as a little piece of stone you took on the beach. Look at it: you will remember the sun, the wind; you will enter in your memories like dreaming awaken.
We know that our memories happened but, afterwards, they stay in our mind next to our dreams. The picture of a Memory, in our mind, is not so different to a dream, or the remembering of a dream. We need to materialize our memories to let us and let others know that it really happened. The dimension of a material Memory is priceless: take for example a matches box or a visit card of an hotel from your memories. Take it in your hands and look at it: all feelings and memories will come up to the surface. We were faithful to others, being next to them or having cheerful, tenders, thoughts for them. We still are after they passed away and because we are faithful to them and thankful for what they brought and gave to us, we have in ourselves the need to preserve their memoir. Because we will never forget.