One Good Memory

Posted on May 15, 2006 in Memory Reading

You must know that there is nothing higher and stronger and more wholesome and good for life in the future than some good memory, especially a memory of childhood, of home. People talk to you a great deal about your education, but some good, sacred memory, preserved from childhood, is perhaps the best education. If a man carries many such memories with him into life, he is safe to the end of his days, and if one only has one good memory left in one’s heart, even that may be the means of saving us….What’s more, perhaps, that one memory may keep him from great evil and he will reflect and say “Yes, I was good and brave and honest, then!”

Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

I finished the book and laid it down with a great deal of sadness and renewal. I am making a list of good memories from childhood. It is hard after all these years of rehearsing the telling of bad ones.

I trust Dostoevsky because he suffered like I did.