The true measure of life is memory

I for my part offer the following interpretation: the true measure of life is memory. Looking back, it traverses the whole of life like lightning. As fast as one can turn back a few pages, it has travelled from the next village to the place where the traveller took the decision to set out. Those for whom life has become transformed into writing can only read the story backwards. That is the only way in which they encounter themselves, and only thus – by fleeing from the present – can they understand life.

Walter Benjamin, Understanding Brecht (Verso, 2003) p. 112