I have been thinking about memories. When I say memories, I mean those instances in our lives that we remember vividly: moments that shaped us into who we are today.

A fundamental question about these moments (or memories) is whether they existed in the past or whether they exist in the present.

And, is there a world where memories are a living reality because both the past and the present combine into what is truly present?

It’s interesting (at least to me) how I came to think about these questions. As I sat in the fourth row at an orchestra playing Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony, I found myself closing my eyes and listening to every rhythm of this masterful piece, especially the second movement. Never have I listened to anything so beautiful, so vivid.

As I closed my eyes and listened, I found myself transported (without any ticket collector asking for a ticket) to a world of my own memories. It was a surreal feeling. Here I am, sitting in a beautiful hall with my wife and mother, but I am also not here.

Has it ever happened that you feel you are in two places at the same time? I am certain that I was.

As I sat in my chair, I saw myself traversing the times of my childhood. I saw that I am an invisible bird that is observing the younger me. I am not directly above – not at a perfect ninety-degree angle – but somewhere at an acute angle to myself. This bird, that is me, is trying to feel what this child – again, me – is feeling.

She is watching me so that she can tell the man listening what it is that I have been doing or feeling in that moment. Does that make sense? Maybe it does not, but that is okay. I am sure that not many people in their lives have had such an experience where they could feel themselves coming out of their body, going back in time, observing themselves flying overhead to observe themselves! It sounds absurd, right?

Yet here I am. The bird sees my father’s dead body being taken away as I, a boy of six years, played with my Lego-type toys surrounded by crying older women. She sees me on a hot summer day, coddled in my sunny storeroom, waiting for my mother to come back home from the office so that I can run to her. The bird sees me sweating profusely in that sweltering summer heat, believing that this is the way of life where you are supposed to shed that salty water every day, all day. She sees me being teased and molested. She sees me flying kites. She sees me playing rugby as a fourteen-year-old, with my friends in school, being extremely happy.

That bird sees me, and she sees many more moments; some make me teary-eyed, some make me smile.

If you listen to the second movement by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, you will understand what I am talking about. The ebbs and flows of the movement take anyone listening intently into the life they have lived so far and bring to their mind the freshness of the life we call the past. It brings to the surface things that matter to them, both good and bad, and that is the beauty of what Tchaikovsky put into this extraordinary piece of music.

I realised that I have been flying from one moment to another. Not that I had wings whatsoever, but I did have the power to move from one memory to another very quickly. Even though I did not have the power to choose which memory I wanted to visit next, I had the power to stop myself if I wanted to.

I held the strings to the bird’s flight, but I chose to let it fly.

The bird traversed places, and it moved across time. And as it did, I continued to feel the warmth of my chair, the touch of my wife’s hands, and the presence of my mother next to me.

The core of my being was travelling across time and space, and the medium was music. As I visited these moments, the warmth of my tears caressed my cheeks. The bird and I wondered whether to control this warmth spreading through me, but we decided not to.

I was there.

Right there.

As the symphony ended, I came back to my current reality. With tears in my eyes and a heart full of gratitude, I had relived those precious moments of my life.

But what struck me most was the vividness of what I had just been. Not what I thought I saw but what I was: a bird, travelling within the depths of my own being.

I started with the question of whether there is a world where memories are a living reality. I think there is, because I am sure I had flown there.