Oops
I spent time writing a post, excitedly compiling data to support it, falling down a few different internet rabbit-holes, deciding against posting it at all, and ultimately ended up past my bedtime feeling mildly down about life. Oopsie!
I don't have much to show for the past few hours. But I am reminded of a similar statement I heard made about reading books.
This person realized that they didn't remember much from most of the (great many) books they'd read in their life. When they did remember something from a book, it was usually a single scene, takeaway, or anecdote -- not nearly commensurate with the time they had spent reading all these volumes.
What, then, had been the point? If they had nothing to show for it all?
Their salvation came in analogy. Meals, too, are lost to time. It's impossible to remember much about the great majority of the food you eat in your life. And yet, that food became you. That food got you through another day, and the atoms of that food still buzz around inside your body. It was not pointless. It was one of infinitely many things on the critical path to you becoming who you are today.
So too with books. And so too with my evening.
Each experience had becomes another bundle of neurons buzzing around in my brain. And even if I can't pinpoint the cause and effect of how my past experiences influence my present -- indeed, even if I can't remember those past experiences at all! -- they shaped, are shaping, will shape me. Forever.