More on Time (aka Memory Lane)

Nostalgia is a very unique feeling, don't you think? No, rather, time, and our perception of it, is something very unique. I mean, time can be fast or slow, depending on how we look at things. Of all things, I think the fabric of time is the most abstract.

The other day, I went to my old school (feels funny, calling it that. I've only graduated for a few months), using the same road I've always used. It's funny, how it felt like I hadn't used that road for a very long time, when in fact it had only been a few months, and the emotions I felt as I passed through it.
It felt strange, as if so much had changed in my life in a short amount of time, and yet that stretch of road still remained the same. I felt a sense of longing, and loss; a stretch of road that had been a part of my life for so long, and that day would possibly be the last time I passed through it. I started to imagine myself, 10 years from now, passing through that road again, imagining how it would feel.

Maybe I just have an over-active imagination, but that wasn't the first time my mind has wandered off like that. Once, I was just walking to the mall, a few blocks from my house. It was a nice day, clear, not too hot, a cold breeze blowing. I just looked around as I walked, taking in my surroundings, then in my mind it was like I saw the town's development, from a patch of land, urban development, the first houses, etc., and all this happened within a few seconds.

Another time, I was at my girlfriend's house. She has this stuffed toy that she told me she's had since she was a baby. She showed me the toy - which I gotta say must have seen better days - and thought it was really nice that she was able to keep something for so long - if it was me, I would've lost it ages ago.
Anyway, I took the toy in my hands, and I looked at it. That's all I did. Carefully. Like an archaeologist would study ancient symbols, I gazed into the toy, trying to unlock its stories. Then, a single sentence crossed through my head, one that every historian asks when stumbling upon an artifact:

"What is your story?"

Almost at once I could see - no, sense everything that toy has been through, without actually knowing what. It was almost as if all that time had been imprinted in that toy, almost waiting to be seen.

Looking back on these things, it makes me feel like the thing we know as "memory" may not simply be something that belongs to us living creatures. Maybe memory is something that we share with everything, and everyone else. Maybe memory is something that belongs to the Universe itself.
After all, aren't our memories what make us who we are? And what are we, if not part of this universe?

Imaginatively yours,
-Zet

P.S:
My other thoughts on memory:

- What if that "genetic memory" thing from Assassin's Creed (a video game) is real?
- Maybe what we think of as "past lives" are actually a form of ancestral/genetic memory.