What makes us who we’re? Is it reminiscence—the names, dates, and tales we supply? Or is it one thing extra elemental, extra enduring?
This query has adopted me for years—from lab bench to bedside, from daughter to physician. But it surely wasn’t till I watched the folks I really like lose their recollections that I started to see one thing sudden: When reminiscence fades, one thing important nonetheless stays. Love. Creativeness. Presence. These aren’t simply what’s left behind. They would be the very floor of who we’re.
When Reminiscence Loops and Language Fails
I keep in mind my grandmother’s sharp mind slowly dimming below the burden of dementia. Her questions looped. Her gaze, as soon as vibrant with recognition, turned vacant. Later, throughout medical coaching, I stood beside a girl with early-onset Alzheimer’s as she requested the identical query thrice in a single breath. These weren’t simply medical observations. They have been heartbreaks.
Then got here my mom’s analysis. ALS—an unforgiving illness that silences the physique earlier than the thoughts. I watched her lose the muscle mass that carried her voice, her breath, her smile. However at the same time as her physique failed, one thing unshakable endured. Her creativeness. Her presence. Her love. She may now not converse, but her gaze held heat. Her eyes nonetheless sparked with mischief. I started to ask: Might creativeness be the heartbeat of consciousness?
Science Meets Thriller
I spent many years immersed in biochemistry, molecular biophysics, and drugs, looking for how the self holds collectively. However grief made that inquiry private.
I keep in mind staring via a microscope at newly found human embryonic stem cells. They glowed like constellations—formless, but radiant with potential. Inside them have been the directions for a physique, a mind, a beating coronary heart—and perhaps, I assumed, the sparkle of consciousness. It felt like watching the universe write its first sentence.
A Detour Into Psychedelics—and Deeper Realizing
When the pandemic quieted the world, that outdated query returned. Within the stillness, I learn Learn how to Change Your Thoughts, and one thing dormant cracked open. I turned to psychedelics, not as an escape, however as a lens into consciousness itself. What occurs once we step exterior bizarre consciousness? What emerges when the recognized dissolves?
In these altered states, I encountered a type of realizing not certain by reminiscence. I wasn’t recalling, I used to be recognizing. Insights lengthy held aside clicked collectively. It made me marvel: Is reminiscence only one expression of one thing deeper? Might love and creativeness be the construction beneath consciousness?
Current analysis exhibits that in psychedelic states, ego boundaries might dissolve whereas a robust sense of connectedness stays, suggesting that selfhood could also be relational, not simply autobiographical.
Rethinking the Thread of Selfhood
We regularly deal with reminiscence like a submitting cupboard. However what if it’s extra like a thread, one which connects us not solely to the previous, however to one another? And when that thread begins to fray, maybe it’s creativeness—our capability to image, to create, to really feel—that holds us collectively.
Research of the mind’s default mode community—linked to reminiscence, self-reflection, and imaginative pondering—spotlight the function of creativity in sustaining id and that means. A 2021 trial discovered {that a} single dose of psilocybin enhanced each convergent and divergent pondering. After a guided session, I skilled this firsthand: Issues that when felt disjointed started to combine. It wasn’t invention. It was recognition.
Forgetfulness exists on a spectrum—from misplaced names to a vanished sense of self. But new analysis means that emotional reminiscence and social responsiveness usually persist in dementia, even when verbal communication disappears. Some theories suggest that the self will not be saved, however patterned—woven from notion, embodiment, and relationship.
The Remaining Threshold: Being Felt
We are able to monitor mind waves, map what fires and what fades, however we nonetheless don’t know what consciousness is, or the place it lives. Science can define consciousness. But it surely can not but contact its essence.
Nonetheless, I imagine this: Even once we can’t see the glimmer of what as soon as was, what stays would be the most important. A look. A smile. A whisper of presence. Love.
We could also be known as to see in a different way. To belief that value has by no means rested on cognition alone. That dignity isn’t earned via reminiscence, however revealed via connection. Even when the lights dim, one thing endures—not at all times seen, not at all times nameable, however nonetheless felt. Within the nervous system of a look. Within the coronary heart that retains displaying up. Within the internet of care that holds us in place.
However what occurs when even that connection is misplaced, when nobody meets the gaze, nobody remembers the title, and the thread of presence snaps?
Is It gone?
For the particular person, it might really feel like vanishing. Not the absence of reminiscence, however the absence of being felt. With out relational mirroring—with out somebody holding their dignity in place—the self dangers dissolving not simply neurologically, however existentially. A life nonetheless current could also be mistaken for one already gone.
So if you end up with a cherished one who now not remembers your title, don’t ask, What have we misplaced? Ask, what can we nonetheless really feel collectively?
Even within the absence of recognition, connection can nonetheless be made. By means of tone. By means of contact. By means of the quiet insistence of displaying up.
I don’t simply imagine this. I’ve lived it.
And in that realizing, there’s awe.
E mail me at Jfontana@treathumanity.org
