I don't know if anyone is ever telling the truth. When I tell stories, I assume I'm telling the truth, but recently a friend told me a story that I had told him two decades ago as if it had happened to him. Both of us routinely tell each other things that we did that we don't remember doing.
Did we? How can we be sure?
In that spirit, I don't entirely believe anything that's a personal anecdote from someone I either don't know very well or don't see enough to communicate with them regularly. & I'm highly skeptical of the rest. I treat them as perhaps colorful fictions, like mediocre movies you find yourself watching in an afternoon with nothing else going on.
& I assume it's going to get worse.
There's so much time in our lives to fill. I've had so many long conversations with friends, & once the internet was invented, complete strangers, that I haven't the slightest memory of. Most interestingly, some of those conversations happened on the telephone when long distance calling was quite expensive. I think I can remember the contents of maybe a dozen phone calls. Those late night conversations, especially when I was young - they are lost to the ether.
What's fascinating to me is that people who are much older - & I assume myself, come to think about it - they tend to tell the same stories over & over. Like all the time they've lived can now be summarized in shorter & shorter anecdotes. As we get older, it seems, many of us become a Reader's Digest version of ourselves.
I loved those conversations, I loved the feeling of connection they gave me in lonelier parts of my life. Friendships & love happened because of those conversations. If all I have left now is the memories of having the conversations, I allow myself a bit of self-pity to begin to dread those memories going away, too.
I know it doesn't happen to all of us. But I can't imagine I'm going to be one of the exceptions.
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