THE title above is my pun on the meaning of “historia vitae magistra” (history, the teacher of life).
I remember a helper in Central Java told me many years ago that he remembered in detail everything he had been through when he was eight months old! He never tries to remember, but rather memories of past situations and events will come to his mind spontaneously if present circumstances require it.
I have often experienced this kind of phenomenon since I was opened.
Last November, I posted a story in my grandfather’s extended family WhatsApp group about the time when my grandfather took me, who was six years old, to the rice fields where my grandfather worked every day. One of my cousins said that I was hallucinating, because she thought it was impossible for me at my current age to remember what happened decades ago. She tested me by asking where the rice fields were. I explained the location and the roads to get there, and what we could see along the way to the rice fields. My cousin was shocked, because everything I told her was true!
I saw a series of images in my mind, a series of imaginations, that I had not thought about.
On December 2, 2023, in the WhatsApp group for alumni of the Department of History, Faculty of Humanities, University of Indonesia, to one of my fellow alumni who wished me a happy birthday, I told about our chat more than 35 years ago, complete with details about what we talked about, the path we had taken on the way from campus to the bus stop and who was walking in front of us.
Simultaneously, the entire WhatsApp group, all of whose
members had studied history, reacted: “Arifin, your memory of the past is very
sharp!”
I responded jokingly—because it would be difficult for me to
tell them that the Latihan was the cause of my sharp memory, “Aren’t we as
historians supposed to always remember the past?”©2023
Pondok Cabe, South Tangerang, December 7, 2023
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