Forever28
Member
- Nov 4, 2025
- 7
Clive Wearing was a man who could only remember for about 30 seconds. After a viral brain infection damaged his hippocampus, his world reset every half a minute. Each moment was new, and every few seconds, life began again.
He would write in his diary, "I am now completely awake for the first time" over and over, never realising he had written it before. "I've never seen a human being before. Never had a dream or a thought. Brain has been totally inactive, day and night the same. No thoughts at all." His love for his wife was one of the few things that stayed. Every time he saw her, he greeted her as though she had just returned from a long absence.
Many of us hold on to memories we wish we could erase, moments that replay endlessly in our minds. But Clive, who lost all memory of the past, lived in a permanent present.
Is that irony? Or is it life's cruel mercy, to remember nothing, and therefore, perhaps, to never suffer from it again? It makes you wonder whether memory is a gift or a curse.
