There is a world beyond these moments and the power of memory to document what is now past. Life is a series of phases that meld together with perpetual forward motion and recollection. This time upon us now—however much it may serve to mark the finality of things and the beginnings of others—is still yet another phase. It is a transitional period, though far more distinct than those past; it is a shift from crawling and searching among others to walking, climbing, and discovering on one’s own.
I still cannot help but to mention the surge of gladness and warmth I feel when musing upon that which is now ahead. There is a voyage before each one of us; I feel confident in this truth. Growth knows no bounds; we begin as children—fledging things—and never emerge as fully grown beings. The moment at which the forward and upward motion of life ceases is the peak that ought to never be reached. We ought to never be wholly ripened but, rather, in an unbroken state of blossoming and ripening—to seek still more of ourselves, the infinite core ever-unfolding. Memory is a weapon we wield as we fight for the years ahead to be our own. Memory is a treasure that should not be lost. Though today may symbolize the end of the days of our youth and the anxiousness to commence the life that awaits, the simplest of memories of times that gave even the subtlest stir in our hearts should not be dismissed. Memory is also the thread intertwined with life—my own being no exception.
I have found the words of the American poet, Jack Gilbert, so very fitting for this moment. “I stand on myself as a hilltop and my life is spread before me.”
There are the times ahead, toward which I turn my gaze and steady my arm, and the times upon which I reflect with fondness and warmth. I see a glimmering and strange new world that waits and a familiar one consisting of pieces of my past laced intricately together. From the earliest memories in my life, I remember the curiosity—the hunger for knowledge—instilled in me. I see myself upon my grandmother’s lap learning the states and their capitals, the spellings of words, and the way I might attack reading books. This beginning phase gave me eyes to see and the unquenchable desire for more. Next, I am seven and tumbling and fumbling through a garage. I hold a tangle of every color of wires and batteries in my fingers. I have a partner and genius in crime; there is no doubt in our minds that we would build a robot. We believed it would work, and so it did. I see myself in pauses, in scenes throughout life’s progression—each time older, still young and still growing.
Time and time again, a mere subtlety becomes the impetus for looking backward and seeing these things. It is a time of nostalgia and hurried remembrances, admitting how much we will all miss everything. Everything is not lost, however, but, rather, it is suspended. I have found it increasingly interesting the things we remember—the ones that jump out in our minds. Composing brief remarks on the lives of those I hold dear has been a challenge. To the one who has known me for my entire life, I struggled with what to write. Upon exchanging our autograph pages and receiving my own back again, I noticed the coincidental mention of the same events between the two sets of pages. As young children we realized the raw materials and potential before us. Kevin and I were the greatest inventors. Because we believed in our own capacity for greatness, we would try our hand at something never before attempted and we would reach the enormity of greatness. I could not be more grateful for the remembrance of creating androids as children. It has permitted a different way of looking: to have the curiosity that leads to understanding what we hold even in our youth and aspiring to release the potential energy and greatness dwelling within us. For the years before us, we must carry on with the mindset of a child, the hands of an artist, and the ardor of a warrior; only then might we really give shape to robots in our lives.
There are those that compel us to build and allow us to see the shape of our greatness. Not difficult to recognize are the individuals found throughout our lives that give us strength and always deserve our unmatched gratitude. There are those whose lives run alongside our own—those that are interwoven with the years behind and the years still to come. The individuals that remain in view travel through life with a similar velocity and momentum to our own. In any given moment, any and all of those who have been in our lives for even a mere instant may be welcomed again through reminiscence. The entirety of life dwells—untouched—in the vaults of our memory. The important thing to remember is to not become wholly immersed and consumed by the past—to look forward but not with any drastic compulsion or obsession and to remain in the reality of the current moment without becoming stagnant and cemented in its context. The lives we are to lead will come; I cannot say it any other way. The words of the German poet Rainer Maria Rilke—an excerpt from his Letters to a Young Poet. These have given me continued strength.
“I would like to beg you, as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.”
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