How Our Memories Shape Our Identities

“Our streets are calendars containing who we were and who we will be next."

I don’t have a favorite writer, but I do have a favorite piece of writing. It’s one I come back to over and over again and one I’ve sent to all my family and friends, aggressively urging them to read it.‌

It’s Colson Whitehead’s Lost And Found, which was published two months after the September 11 attacks. The article is a moving tribute to New York City and the Twin Towers, but it’s also about how our identities are shaped by our own, personalized memories of the places we live. “There are eight million naked cities in this naked city — they dispute and disagree,” he writes. “The New York City you live in is not my New York City; how could it be?”

I still remember the first time I made a (failed) attempt at hailing a cab in New York City, the time I fully submerged myself in a slush puddle, and of course, the time my friend and I ate dollar-slice pizza in the middle of Times Square convinced that we were the luckiest people on the planet. Here’s how Colson captures the experience of clumsily finding your footing in a new city:

“The city knows you better than any living person because it has seen you when you are alone. It saw you steeling yourself for the job interview, slowly walking home after the late date, tripping over nonexistent impediments on the sidewalk. It saw you wince when the single frigid drop fell from the air-conditioner 12 stories up and zapped you. It saw the bewilderment on your face as you stepped out of the stolen matinee, incredulous that there was still daylight after such a long movie. It saw you half-running up the street after you got the keys to your first apartment. It saw all that. Remembers too.”

The memories of these experiences shape the way we see ourselves. With every move, we evolve into a different person. We try on different identities, and then we mourn them. In the present, we take the deli next door for granted, but then once it’s gone, we whine and ask, “Why do things have to change?” “At some point you were closer to the last time than you were to the first time, and you didn't even know it,” Colson writes.‌

This is the part that gets me every time:‌

“Our streets are calendars containing who we were and who we will be next. We see ourselves in this city every day when we walk down the sidewalk and catch our reflections in store windows, seek ourselves in this city each time we reminisce about what was there 5, 10, 40 years ago, because all our old places are proof that we were here. One day the city we built will be gone, and when it goes, we go. When the buildings fall, we topple, too.”‌

We topple, and we rebuild. If you visited New York City before September 2001, your New York looks radically different than mine. I used to walk past the One World Trade Center every day on my way to work, and that building is a crucial part of my personal skyline, but it may not even be part of yours.

Colson writes:

“The twin towers still stand because we saw them, moved in and out of their long shadows, were lucky enough to know them for a time. They are a part of the city we carry around. It is hard to imagine that something will take their place, but at this very moment the people with the right credentials are considering how to fill the crater. The cement trucks will roll up and spin their bellies, the jackhammers will rattle, and after a while the postcards of the new skyline will be available for purchase. Naturally we will cast a wary eye toward those new kids on the block, but let's be patient and not judge too quickly. We were new here, too, once.”

Now, we’re living in a time where a global pandemic will completely re-shape our worlds — our favorite bagel shop may shutter and the bar where we had our first New York drink may never come back. You may not get to say goodbye, because well, the world doesn’t wait on us. Appreciate what you have now, and visit your neighborhood’s favorite haunts as much as you can.

As Colson says, “Maybe we become New Yorkers the day we realize that New York will go on without us.”

Read it in full here.

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