We are what we remember

I found this article at CNN.com (which lists occasional articles from Time magazine). The article made me cry (partly hormonal, yes, but it would have made me sad at any time). It highlights how ephemeral memory is, how chemically malleable and chemically based. It's also a well-told story, and I don't want to ruin the punchline any further, but I highly recommend reading it.

UPDATE: I got into a discussion with the hubby about what conclusions I draw from this article, where the upshot is that I'm kind of nuts (okay, I view the world in a very different way than he does). Here's what I draw from the article:

1. I start with the opinion that, for the most part, a lot of what makes a person an individual person is the sum of their memories. Memories and our interpretations of them often govern what actions we take and how we react to different situations. You can also call this experience.

2. From the article, we can see clearly that memories are highly malleable and manipulable by outside agencies, especially by chemicals. From experience, I would add that memories and interpretations of actions can also be affected by internal emotional states and also physiological states (injuries and illness clearly alter internal biochemistry).

3. Given 1 and 2, experiences and memories are subjective in such a way that is often unverifiable (given that external verification is often dependent on other people whose own memories are also subjective). This brings me to the very buddhist conclusion that everything may be (or is) an illusion.

4. Finally (and here's the part where I'm nuts), given that everything is an illusion, my ultimate conclusion (which is what I just told the hubby, and not the intervening thought processes) is that everything is meaningless. Which I don't always mean in a hopeless, despair-y kind of way, or in a there-is-no-cause-and-effect kind of way, or finally in a nothing-is-valid kind of way, just in a there-is-no-larger-story-arc, no-underlying-meaning-to-it-all kind of way. Again, in a very buddhist way of thinking - the only thing you can know is true is the moment you are in. And then it's gone and you are in the next moment.

Discuss.