Chapter 14 | Donna Cardinal

(continued)

When we come now to consider the role of memory, we might be inclined to think of memory as an opposite pole to future possibility; however, in my experience, the two form a kind of an axis, as I hope to show.

One important role for memory is as a site of hope. Hope is a prerequisite for envisioning alternatives to the status quo. If we do not believe that something other than the status quo is possible, we would have no reason to attempt to address present problems, however intolerable they are. “Hope can neither be created nor destroyed. It is like a path on the hillside. At first there is no path, however as more and more people walk this way, a path appears.”

Ronna Jevne, executive director of the Hope Foundation at the University of Alberta, speaks of the importance of a person’s hope quotient in overcoming adversity, especially illness. In her research with people living with cancer, Jevne seeks to help the person build their hope quotient (Jevne, 1998). In my work, we help people ground themselves in their own hope by inviting them to recall a time in their own lives when their spirit was emancipated, when their inner and outer lives were in harmony, when newness entered the world through them and changed them and their world. The question varies according to the group and its focus, but some examples are: recall a time when learning was empowering to you; or a time when you took a risk for the sake of something you believed in and, against strong odds, something good happened; or a time when you were an actor in history rather than a bystander. Everyone has such a story. Most people have many such stories. Telling the stories reminds us of how we have acted in the past to address issues and we come to see ourselves as capable of acting in the world to create something new, as citizens making political claims rather than as passive subjects. At this point, the diversity among people is evident and respect for that diversity begins to develop. The validity of each person’s experiences, of each person’s concerns, becomes apparent, even when those experiences and concerns differ significantly one from another. Memory, and the sharing of memories, begins to shape the flexible, contingent, fragile space needed for considering claims upon the future in relation to one another.

A second function of memory in this approach to creating culture is as an analogue to futures imaging. We are all comfortable with memories. We all have them. We know what they are, where they come from, how they act. They record events which have, after all, happened. And we can recall them at will. Once we recall some part of a memory, all the rest will come, for the memory is holographic, that is, all of it is contained within each part of it. If we want to, we can begin anywhere with an aspect of a remembered event or person and continue to recall and relive and relate the memory in considerable detail. Now consider the possibility that images are memories of the future. Images will have exactly the same qualities as memories: they are concrete and specific, not abstract and theoretical; we can relive them in our imaginations — taste, touch, smell, see, feel, hear them and explain the significance or meaning they have to us. So too, by analogy, can we taste, touch, smell, see, feel, and hear images of the future, live them in our imaginations, and grasp their significance and meaning to us. Images of the future operate in our imaginations in exactly the same way as memories of the past, even to the fact that two people remember the same “future” event differently! The only difference between memories and images is that memories have happened and futures images haven’t — or so we think. But in the imaginal world this is not a very big difference. So entertaining images of possible futures, or futures we desire and intend, is a way of rehearsing them, living them in our imaginations, initially within ourselves and then with others, to see if they meet our criteria of loving, good, just and humane futures. For these are the futures we seek to create.

Memory functions in a third way. In addition to reminding us of the basis of our hope and serving as an analogue of futures imaging, our memories are also a storehouse of ideas and possibilities we have entertained through the years. When invited to imagine alternative futures, some imagers will produce memories of the past — stories or feelings or actions which fully embody the world they long for, that have become their touchstone for the future. They have glimpsed their future and it is yesterday. As I said before, in the realm of the imaginal, this is not a consequential difference so long as the image stands the tests for concreteness, specificity, compellingness, etc.

Chapter 14, continued >

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