Swimming the Atlantic

Yesterday I was showing two young Colombian children where I come from, using a map of the world. I showed them where Colombia is and where Ireland is. They seemed impressed at first and asked me questions like what language we speak there and a few others. There was one question in particular that struck me though and it was, “Are you not tired after swimming all the way from Ireland to Colombia?”. Cute. Then I realised that the map of the world had no relevance to them whatsoever. “I can’t swim to the end of the pool in my school. How many pools is it to Ireland?”. Good question. I had no idea but it’s the kind of question I like so I checked, and if it’s a 25 metre pool, then it would be 321,640 pools from Ireland to Colombia across the Atlantic. She was right to presume I would be tired.

It was a funny little exchange but it made me realise that kids really have no grasp on the scale of the world or anything outside their own lives which in reality is true for all of us. It got me thinking about my own childhood and how my little world seemed so big to me at the time. I was reminiscing about times not long gone that seemed an eternity away. I was suddenly back in that world, going on adventures in the field near my house, which seemed like journeys to the other side of the world. I was sent hurtling back to a time when we would throw blackberries as if they were bullets and if hit by them, the mark left, was a bullethole. I was climbing the trees on the road behind my house, climbing to the top of the world and back down again, trying to smoke grass rolled up in a leaf because I had seen someone on ‘Cops’ being pulled over and searched for ‘grass’. 

I could feel the punches and the kicks from the boys around the corner who we used to fight with. I could smell the cut grass that meant summer time was not far away. I could hear the sound of the old top loaded washing machine that my parents brought from New York when they moved back to Ireland and I was there. I was back in my house in Maynooth, 7 years old again, climbing whatever was climbable, falling and bouncing right back up, most of the time. I was walking in through the front door of the house, torn pants and bloody hands after an epic battle in the war between our road and the back road. Victory had been ours, but at a price. Now I had to face the wrath of my mam. 

Memories so vivid, flooded my mind, that all consciousness of the present disappeared and I was mentally and physically transported to a different world. I had shrunk and my world had grown. The few people in my life were all I had known when I was a child and I was with them again. I was talking with my friends, playing with my cousins and having my hands warmed by my mam after the mistake of partaking in a snowball fight without any gloves on. All those people were real again. Somehow altered, slightly distorted and perhaps rose tinted but all real. 

I realised that swimming the Atlantic may be impossible but time travel isn’t. As long as we have memories, we have the ability to travel back to any part of our lives at any time we so desire. We have a lifetime of memories to access at will. We can listen to a song that will ignite a memory or smell something that sparks a nostalgic passage through time and space. But of course not all memories survive. Some die and some just fade away, but the ones that we keep are the ones that have shaped us and made us who we are. They are still real. As long as we are still living and breathing, our memories are real because they are the foundation on which we are built. The people we have met, the people that have taught us things will live on as long as we do, in our actions, in our words and they will continue to live on in the actions and words of those that we affect and teach. 

Apart from the precise present, the now, the instant, all we have are memories. Even 5 seconds ago is now a memory. Will you remember this very moment in ten years? Unlikely. But why not? Why not make every moment, one that you will remember? Make every moment like the smell of fresh cut grass or the taste of a blackberry bullethole. Fill your memory bank with moments of bliss, that can accompany you on your journey through life like good friends that will never disappear. 

That is how we can travel to the future too. We can create the future in the here and now, because the future will essentially be a collection of memories. So if you want a future of contentment and bliss, create it now. Don’t wait for it. The future is waiting to be painted and you have the brush. 

Maybe one day that little girl will write a blog about the guy who swam from Ireland to Colombia and I will live on as that guy. Somehow altered, distorted and rose tinted but a beautiful memory nonetheless.