Sevenfold Silence

My friend got kittens. They're cute, they stumble around and chase each other and sleep three quarters of the day, and they have no memory worth speaking of.

And it's the latter one that's important. Kittens don't remember. They remember in the vaguest sense--they might like you a lot--but they won't remember that it's because you held them for a two hour car ride (like I did to our kittens). They may hate you, but they won't remember that it's because you stepped on their tails. They may be scared of you, but they won't remember that it's because you made loud noises at them. Their memory's experiential, but not event-based. (Presumably. To be fair, I haven't done much research on kittens. This is conjecture.)

If we accept reincarnation, well...in terms of our past lives, we're like kittens. We may remember likes, dislikes, loves, hates, and still have them affect us, but we can't remember far enough back, beyond this life, to remember why we feel like we do. We can't remember the metaphorical steppings upon of the tail, or the holdings and lovings. Living in the present, affected by the dark past--like kittens.

Which makes me wonder, in a roundabout way--if this metaphor's at all accurate or worth playing with!--if people with better memories have better past life recall. (As in, they can remember back further and more accurately, essentially.) I'm suspicious of this whole notion, primarily because I have a memory like a steel trap, at least in this life, and can't remember a blessed thing reliably from any past lives.

(Note: there's a conclusion I think you can maybe draw from this, which is that if we have better memories than kittens, maybe there's something out there that remembers things from past lives routinely, and thinks of us human-bodied things as being silly and forgetful like kittens! To which I say--maybe, but strictly in the realm of theory. Unless somebody remembers being such a creature?)