Memory as Identity

John Locke said that what gives each person his or her personal identity is that person’s private store of recollections.  If so, then people should be careful curators of the assortment of memories that they collect over the years.  Every time you notice something, every time something strikes you as important enough to store away in you mind, you create another piece of who you are…I am a person who remembers a flock of white pelicans over Thompson Reservoir, pelicans banking in unison into the sunlight, banking into the shadow, flashing on and off like a scoreboard.

--Kathleen Dean Moore, from Riverwalking