Did Our Past Really Happen?

I watched a NETFLIX movie series yesterday about American Crime and one of the characters made the following statement:  "I just sitting alone in a room with all my failures."  This phrase touches a lot of people at every level of our socio-economic profiles because at some point-in-time, we have all been left with failures of which they either motivate or destroy the beholder of these truths.  But, there is a bigger picture...  there is always a bigger picture...

As Americans and members of mankind and the human race, all we have in the future is our memories of the our past...  and, we keep those memories housed in the memory bank of our mind...  somewhere inside that head of ours or we keep them in a container of photographs and video clips....  of which again, very few of us ever go back to take a looksee...  unless we are sharing with others or are lonely.

NO ONE EVER ASKS THE QUESTION:  Did those memories actually happen?  Sometimes, when we look back into our forgotten world of photographs, we see images of us, they look like us, but we don't remember doing this or that...  Has our subconscious blocked it out or is it possible that it never happened.

Once our past is GONE it is gone...  it never reappears to confirm what we just experienced, felt, or endured and yet we are more or less certain that it did, in fact, happen, just the way we remembered....  but, what about a year later, or five years later, or a decade, or half a century...  is our past really accurate, are our recollections of our past accurate either?

When I wake up in the morning in bed, after sleeping all night, I immediate conclude that this is exactly what I just did...  SLEEP...  but, I cannot prove it in a court of law because it is gone and the actual past of the person sleeping with me is gone as well...  never to be proven other than assuming it was sleep we just experienced after getting out of bed, but we do not know for sure...  since that past is GONE FOREVER...

I can look at the clock on the wall or on the computer and see that I have been sitting in this chair and typing on this computer for 20 minutes or more...  but, how can I prove that this is what I was really doing 10 minutes ago, since my past is GONE...  I am assuming...  I am extrapolating...  but within some level of comprehension, I can NEVER BE SURE of the PAST because the PAST is GONE.