Another year bites the dust: reflections and resolutions

When you look back, have you found that the past couple of Covid-impacted years have played havoc with your memory? In my case, it’s not long-Covid. It’s not even just my age. It seems that everyone I ask seems to struggle with pinpointing their recent recollections. Were they BC or AC – before or after the start of Covid?

This coming March, it will be three long years since the Prime Minister told us, “From this evening I must give the British people a very clear instruction. You must stay at home.”

Sometimes that feels very recent. Sometimes it feels like ancient history. But trying to remember what I did, and when I did it, in those subsequent years has become something of a challenge.

Mind you, it’s easy enough give you a list of the things I didn’t do. Despite all the best laid plans, I failed to learn a foreign language, or read Dickens, or practice a musical instrument, or even become an expert in bread-making. That single accusing sourdough loaf could have made a decent doorstop.

Memory tricks

But when it comes to what I did do, I keep puzzling. “Was that really in 2020? Or maybe last year? Or when?”

At the very best of times, memory can play tricks on us. I’m lucky enough, and old enough, to have been alive when Neil Armstrong first walked on the moon, one of the most truly unforgettable and historic moments in the whole of human history.

I am also one of the very few people who failed to follow history being made, because on the day in question I was in the middle of the desert in Afghanistan – as a student en route overland to India. An epochal memory in a never-to-be forgotten journey.

I was nowhere near Afghanistan. I was still in Frankfurt – right near the start of the journey. My recollections turn out to be a total figment of my imagination.

At least, that’s the story I have told everyone for the past few decades. It’s the story I truly believe. I can picture the time and the place, and I would gladly have sworn in court that this account was absolutely accurate. Except that a couple of weeks ago I was up in the attic and found my diary from that trip. I looked up the date of Neil Armstrong’s lunar descent. And there it was – clear as daylight. I was nowhere near Afghanistan. I was still in Frankfurt – right near the start of the journey. My recollections turn out to be a total figment of my imagination.

False memory syndrome is an intriguing area of psychology, potentially of real importance in courts of law, but more than a little disconcerting when you find your own memories might also be false.

Few regrets

I have very few regrets in life, but I often wish I had kept a daily diary throughout my life. If only to clear up some of those family arguments about what we did when.

A new year is the perfect time to start a diary, though this may well become yet another well-intentioned resolution that withers on the vine. And while most memories are very personal, corporate memories matter too. Here at Kaleidoscope Health and Care we are immensely proud of the past year, the events we have run, the collaborations we have supported, the awards we have won.

We can look back on this past year with satisfaction, but never with complacency. Because a new year, and a new set of challenges, is about to begin.

Happy new year.