You lived the first three years of your life. You learned to walk, to talk, to recognize faces.
So why can't you remember any of it?
This phenomenon is called childhood amnesia, and it affects every single human on Earth.
Here's what science knows: Your brain was fully capable of forming memories as an infant. Studies show babies can remember events for weeks, even months.
But those memories don't survive into adulthood.
The leading theory involves a process called neurogenesis. In your first few years, your brain was producing neurons at an incredible rate, constantly rewiring itself.
This rapid development actually overwrote old memories. Like saving new files over old ones on a computer.
But there's something even more interesting.
The way you experience reality as an adult depends on language. Before you could speak, you processed the world in a completely different way.
Those early memories weren't just overwritten. They were incompatible with the system your brain uses now.
Your childhood self essentially lived in a different mental universe. One that your current brain can't access.
You're not forgetting your childhood. Your brain literally rebuilt itself into something that can't read those files anymore.
Your earliest self is still there. Just locked in a format you can no longer open.