These thoughts stayed with us for a long time, and from them, over time, the idea of the Lexicon — a digital guardian of memories — was born. Now that this idea has become a reality, I want to record here how it came to be and why we believe it is necessary.
In difficult moments, when we feel threatened and alone, we often recall our childhood. When our will to live is running low, it’s as if memory connects us to an external battery.
In the past, we can find a source of energy we are unaware of
“It was pleasant, in such misfortune, to think of a distant land and the scattered village of Žepa, where every house has a story about his fame and success in Istanbul, but where no one knows or suspects the other side of that fame, nor the price at which success is achieved.”
(Ivo Andrić: “The Bridge on the Žepa”)
I used to think that nostalgia was a bittersweet feeling that prevents us from embracing the present or the future; that older people seek comfort in it when they no longer expect anything from the future. What a mistake, Andrić might say to me.
Memories are not meant for escape. They are our reservoir of meaning. An invisible layer of our biography in which, surprisingly often, lies the meaning that brings a strong sense of comfort.
“What I have, I see as if in the distance; what is vanishing, that I truly possess.”
(J. W. Goethe: “Faust”)
The only thing that is certain is the past. We possess it "truly". It is finished, complete, and clear. Only when something is over, when we look at it from the distance of the present, do we realize what it truly meant. That’s why older people often know how to tell simple truths — because they have lived them, recognized them, and summed them up.
My students recognize this as well. I ask them: Why did Goethe manage to write Faust, his greatest work, only in old age? “Well, that’s when a person is the wisest,” they answer.
Only then do we manage to grasp that thread of wisdom that leads to meaning. It guides us through the maze of everyday life, like Ariadne’s thread. When we seize that thread, we feel comfort even when disappointed and hurt. Because everything gets meaning.
What is meaning?
It is different for everyone. For the hero of Andrić’s story, meaning is the bridge he built for others.
“Whoever built them a bridge here would do them the greatest good.”
(Ivo Andrić: “The Bridge on the Žepa”)
It began as a need to reconnect with himself, with the childhood that was suddenly interrupted. It ended as the construction of a bridge for others. That leads us to what we might call the definition of meaning: Meaning is what connects us with others.
“It looked as if both riverbanks had hurled at each other a foaming jet of water, and these jets collided, joined into an arch, and remained thus for a moment, hovering above the abyss.”
(Ivo Andrić: “The Bridge on the Žepa”)
That is meaning: a bridge we build with and for others. That is the greatest value: to create something that connects us, that lasts, that has significance. This is how we get a bridge that floats over the chasm of meaninglessness.
Meaning does not come directly from success, nor from plans, nor from controlling the future. It comes from what we leave to others. From the bridges we build for others, and memories are the material from which those bridges are made.
That’s how we came up with the idea of the Digital Memory Lexicon
Not as just another app, but as a space where we revive and preserve what connects us to others.
The Digital Lexicon was born out of our need not to forget memories, to preserve them, and to recognize meaning in them.
The Lexicon is our way to help others do that. To save what matters most. To discover their own bridge.
And to pass it on.
Interested in the Digital Memory Lexicon?
Sign up here for updates to be among the first to know when we launch the Lexicon and receive the latest news!