The Two Path of the Past: Mnemonics of Loss and Gain
The lost opportunity is a familiar motif in literary and popular representations of remembering. The conventional emphasis is on the melancholic quality which casts across a subsequent life of regret in light of a mistakenly untaken path (this being one aspect among many in lost opportunities). There has been a critical neglect of how lost opportunities are conceived and evaluated in everyday narratives, and of how they relate to current circumstances, plans, dreams and desires. Using data gathered from in-depth interviews with women of various ages and backgrounds, this article examines the ways in which they engage with the choices they have and have not made. As a result, the commonplace mnemonic motif of lost opportunity is reconceived so as to recognize its simultaneous orientation to the past, the present and the future, implicating both memory and imagination in its enactment. Remembering lost opportunities is a key feature to a symbolic construction of self in everyday life.