Subconscious Mind and Memory: A Hybrid Third Space-We Exist In

No one can actually define what home is. A residence, a homeland, a place of birth, a place of death, a person, mind and memory or the unbreakable walls of thoughts, all of them entangle human beings in firm boundaries without giving any path to escape.

“Between the motion
And the act
Falls the shadow” (Eliot’s ‘The Hollow Men’)

Shadows, a word that brings a blurry illusion or supernatural image in the mind. But for some people it is a home. Many researchers and critics have argued in articles that humans live in memories and Susan Stanford Friedman claims that the subconscious mind and memory act as a hybrid space where human beings exist. Considering the fact that most of the people live almost half of their lives in their minds and make it their home, it is not wrong to say that humans exist in shadows. Shadows of the past, memories, unfulfilled desires, and fears.

The mind of a person is an ocean of memories, feelings, thoughts and emotions that regulate his life, the fluidity of these thoughts makes their own path in the mind, John Milton truely says in the ‘Paradise Lost’, “The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven..”

There are many scenarios one faces in his/her life that throw light to these shadows if examined critically. For instance, while talking to someone, we have unspoken words lingering in our minds or our tongues that we don’t say at the very last moment. These unspoken words act as shadows that symbolize any incident from past life or subconscious thoughts that surrounded us and do not allow us to speak the truth. This is like an uncanny sensation that was kept subdued and now it appears all of a sudden because of the scenario we are in.

Human beings are bound by the idea of fear: fear of a place, the lost home, or a rank that they consider to be their secure place. In contemporary world, the home has become a place of experiencing uncanny sensations because people are bound to the structure of their minds and memories that they cannot abandon. These things become the shadows that control their lives. Similarly, for many people, a place becomes a reminder of other person, a lover or a friend and that place remain occupied with their memories that they cannot ignore while visiting it. Thus, they travel back in their memory to live those moments again.

The mind of a person is an ocean of memories, feelings, thoughts and emotions that regulate his life, the fluidity of these thoughts makes their own path in the mind, John Milton truely says in the ‘Paradise Lost’, “The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven..” Guilt plays a significant role in controlling the present and future of many people. The condition of a guilt-ridden person is like a fly that enters a room and buzzes constantly at the window, struggling to get out of that room. Their home becomes utopia for them and their minds, an imaginary space that they try to abandon but, in the process abandons their own self and mental health. They cannot get rid of their puzzled minds and drown in the shadows their thoughts, end up existing in a third space.

These scenarios give us a different way to look at our lives and try to come out of our Subconscious Mind and Memory to live life peacefully or make our thoughts positive and happy to live a dreamy life with them.

Almas Amjad

The writer is a student of English Literature.

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