Creating Is How We Remember

What do you think is the strangest thins about how memory works?

You can forget a person’s name, but remember the color of the sky the day you met them. You might forget the words of a song, but still hum the feeling of it years later. Sometimes, remembering doesn’t look like remembering at all — it looks like creating.

When we make things — draw, write, sing, sew, edit, photograph — we’re collecting pieces of who we are before they fade. A poem can hold the version of you that was brave enough to say something out loud. A sketch might hold the friend you don’t talk to anymore. A dance can hold the kind of freedom you don’t always get to feel in real life.

This is what makes creativity more than a hobby. It’s a kind of archive — a record of emotion, change, and discovery. When people say art is “self-expression,” that’s part of it, sure. But really, it’s self-preservation. It’s our way of saying, “This happened. It mattered.”

Culture is just the collective version of that same instinct. Every culture, no matter how small or scattered, creates because it refuses to be forgotten. That’s why your grandmother’s recipes are never written the same way twice. Why old songs sound different depending on who’s singing. Why slang changes every year but still feels like home.

If you’re a creative person — especially if you grew up moving between cultures, ideas, or even countries — you’re constantly balancing between what’s new and what’s inherited. You remix tradition every time you post a short film, design a logo, or turn a memory into a lyric. It’s all storytelling, just in different accents.

So next time you make something, don’t worry about whether it’s “good.” Ask instead: what memory am I keeping alive?

Every piece you create adds one more voice to the world’s messy, beautiful chorus of remembering.