Learning as remembering

Today I was reading a paper from the immunological literature (Lenardo et al. 1999. Mature T lymphocyte apoptosis. Annu. Rev. Immunol. 17:221, if you're curious) and came across this word: "anamnestic". Two seconds later I was Googling "anamnestic" which led to Googling "anamnesis" and what emerged was this beautiful idea that learning is actually remembering things we already knew in past lives. Credit Plato.

Sometimes I think it wouldn't be so bad to be reincarnated, to know that there were yet more sunrises and sunsets to see as we grew old and passed. When I was young I thought something like this happened anyway: that upon conception each of our souls was plucked from the primordia where all bodiless souls await and eventually return. I remember thinking that, had I not been conceived at the moment when I was in fact conceived, perhaps my soul would have ended up in Africa or India or some other place. Then maybe I'd be calling some other people mother and father or forming thoughts in another language, thoughts that would only be vaguely recognizable to me now.

I think I might scrawl some words on a piece of paper, bury it in my parents' backyard in Texas, and see if I ever find it again. (Has no one ever put anamnesis to the test? I find that hard to believe. It's such a beautiful idea.) Come to think of it, maybe I'll try it here in Michigan too, somewhere deserted, maybe in the U.P. And come to think of it twice, maybe I'll do this wherever I go from now on. What's the harm?

But what would I write? I'm thinking it might start like this: "My name is Stewart, b. 1976 C.E in Carrollton, Texas. This is my experiment in anamnesis."