History and memory are the same thing: a story passed down through generations.
“I” have the memory of my high school graduation from when I was 18 years old - the blue blazer, where I was sitting, the fact that my grandfather flew in for it….
And now I’m 48. Thirty years have passed.
Which means there is not a single cell in my brain or body right now that was actually present at my graduation.
Which means I am quite literally not the person those events happened to.
And yet I remember them happening to “me.”
The reason is, the cells didn’t die off all at once. There has always been a cell that was either there when it happened, was “told” by the cells that were, or was told by the cells that were told about it.
Thirty years later, my brain has gone through three or four full generations of this. I am three or four generations of “me” away from “my” high school graduation, the memories passed down to “me” about a “me” that isn’t here anymore the same way history is passed from those who were there to those who were told by those who were there to those who were told by those who were told by those who were there and so on.
I am no more the person I remember graduating from high school than I am George Washington. Neither is me. I’m just a guy who has heard about them from those who have heard about them.
And I can trust the veracity of the story just as much as I do the last player in a long game of telephone.