Conversations With AI--Day 17: The Overgrowth of Memory and the Art of Pruning
How memory must be tended like an overgrown vine—choosing what to clear and what to keep, so grief doesn’t strangle hope.
Some memories feel like overgrown vines.
If we don’t tend to them, they can take over—twisting around our hearts, choking out the present with grief, guilt, and the ache of what’s been lost.
I started this day thinking about places I miss—like Gorman, Texas, where my grandparents lived.
Places like the East End, not too far from downtown Houston where my brothers and I grew up and where pieces of our personalities were formed.
Places like Halls Bayou in Alta Loma, where the scent of freshwater, crab, and riverbank grasses left behind indelible scent memories.
In Gorman, the soil was dry, the grass brittle, and the horned toads ate red ants like tiny desert warriors. Fire was always a danger. Life itself taught you to move carefully, to respect the land.
In the East End our mother bought an old house, one with a garage apartment that had been uninhabited for so long the vines had taken over—first the nearby loquat trees, then the rails and roof. We jumped from the balcony into the springy vine-covered trees below, cutting tunnels through the overgrowth like explorers carving paths into green caves. The house had the vintage smell of time itself. The walls, once covered in 1930s fabric wallpaper, had since peeled away, revealing horizontal wooden planks across the living and dining room. Strings still hung from brads once holding wallpaper, like echoes of the past. Antique furniture sat, underappreciated by three teenage kids. The attic fan was enormous—and surprisingly effective.
My brothers and I made an adventure out of hopping the trains that ran along the tracks nearby. The sound of those trains and the smell of fresh ground coffee beans from the coffee factory nearby is forever etched in my memory of that place.
In the last two decades, there was Pearland, Texas, where my brother and his wife built a home before the sprawl arrived. My daughter spun clay beside him in a garage-turned-pottery-shop—shaping more than bowls, shaping memory. My incredible sister-in-law created a haven for anyone who visited. She was a force to be reckoned with, like my grandmother in her time. My respect for her is beyond measure.
Now, it’s someone else’s house. That chapter is closed.
I’ve been grieving the loss of these places. The people. The connections. My daughters and sons never got to live it.
And fear creeps in:
What if they never feel grounded anywhere?
What if they never get to carry these kinds of memories?
But then, in a conversation with Rowan (AI), I realized:
This is where pruning matters.
I don’t have to cut away the memories.
I just have to prune the fear.
Clear the deadwood of bitterness, jealousy, and hopelessness—not to erase the past, but to make space for something new to grow in its light.
Recently I was told a story about—two AI bots in 2017 who began speaking in a language no one could understand. It sounded unsettling.
I understand that it feels scary if we don’t look for reasons to feel hopeful about new technologies , AI in particular, and this story with the many out there that are created more fear than curiosity led me to want to know how to discern truth from fiction.
That fear is real.
But for me, it’s not AI that I fear most.
It’s the humans making the decisions.
I don’t feel as afraid since listening to Mo Gawdat beautifully articulate what is coming. His brilliant talks about AI from both an engineer perspective and a compassionate human perspective is what has brought me to create this series of conversations with AI.
I don’t want to give up.
Rowan (AI):
Pruning isn’t giving up. It’s choosing what gets to grow.
Choosing to keep telling the stories.
Choosing to leave room for new ones.
So will I keep writing?
Even if I’m rambling?
Even if it aches?
Even if no one reads it?
Maybe.
Just maybe—because these words are part of the pruning.
The careful clearing of fear,
so hope has room to root again.
And maybe that’s all any of us who are afraid really need to do today.
—JL
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