Are our memories real or just an illusion?

Are our memories real or just an illusion? I'm from a time when politicians who lied and swore were still forced to resign, but that's no longer the case! (and it wasn't that long ago…!) that age is another story, because history is always life, regardless of duration, perhaps that's one of the reasons why our memories always seem to be oriented towards the past and not the future. That's why Jorge Luis Borges (Argentine writer) said that "physics suggests that consciousness can be sustained by memories that do not necessarily correspond to a real past." Someone exemplified it as a "time arrow"—that is, we all go through moments of having a "feeling" that time flows from the past to the future—it's a long-standing mystery, both in physics and philosophy. As far as we know, many physical laws are symmetrical in time, but we experience time as moving forward. "Reality is merely an illusion; albeit a very persistent one." (Albert Einstein). Believe me, I have some very personal reasons for writing this post. People's true colors appear when they are not in the spotlight. Unfortunately, some friends are about to click "like" or rather "thumbs up," but they don't really read because they take a long time to read this "writing," and when they see that it's long, they skip it. But, "they forget what Albert Einstein said: 'If, at first, an idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it. Imagination is more important than knowledge, because knowledge is limited, while imagination encompasses the entire world.'" The phrase "Growing old is the only way to live a long time," often attributed to Charles Saint-Beuve or to Albert Camus' poem, reflects the inevitability of the passage of time as a condition for longevity. This perspective sees aging not as a loss, but as a natural process of accumulating experience, wisdom, and maturity, overcoming the obsession with youth. "Growing old is the only way to live a long time." Many people don't reach eighty because they waste too much time trying to stay in their forties. We all wish to reach old age and we all deny that we have arrived. I don't understand this about years: that it is good to live them, but not to have them.” (Albert Camus)