Looking back, walking down memory lane, ..we are rarely aware of doing any editing and or revising of our memories, but according to those in the know,...we do.
As life experiences teach us, mold us, and change us, we change the way we remember things.
As a kid, I remember our ice-skating rink as huge! but...when I saw it many years later as an adult, it seemed to have shrunk somehow. Actually, wherever I went when I visited my home town, everything I saw seemed to have shrunk.
I remembered the forest we used to play in as massive and mysterious, the lake next to the school as enormous and never-ending, the school house as big as a cathedral, and the house I grew up in, well, that had somehow become quite small and sad looking.
Memories...can be deceptive, elusive, incorrect, enhanced, magnified, basically, to put it simply: go through a whole lot of "spin cycles". Our memories, whether they may be good or bad (as deemed by us), very seldom in my view stay static, most of them take a turn or five through the spin cycle.
(Spin, as in what media for instance does with information.)
We may, if we are old enough, wax lyrical about the "good ol days" , times when everything seemed much simpler and much easier to understand.
But, here's the perplexing thing, was it though?
Are what we call the good ol days just our edited versions of what we remember?
I recently listened to a talk-back show on the radio in which a "futurist" (his name escapes me) was asked how he views the future. "-Optimistically" he answered.
"-Really?" asked the interviewer, "with the threat of a nuclear war at our doorstep, China expanding its territory, North Korea sending one missile after the other into the skies, Russia interfering with political elections in various countries, global warming and ice-caps melting etc.etc., how can you possibly be optimistic?"
The futurist retorted by going through a long list of mankind's fears and concerns, wars and struggles etc.etc. from the 1950's through to today. (Listening to the futurist I concluded that the good ol days probably never existed, life has, and always will be, a struggle. )
"Every decade comes with new challenges and difficulties, but it also comes with new discoveries, new inventions, new ways of dealing with mankind's challenges and difficulties, new ways of expanding our understanding of our planet, our Universe, ourselves, our fellow human beings,
and other life forms" he continued.
Looking back, more often than not, the way we remember something changes every time we recall the memories of days gone by, and according to the futurist, we tend to "forget" some things. aka "edit" away some memories and keep others that are more congruent with our current mindset.
Nader, a neuroscientist at McGill University in Montreal, together with other colleagues at the University have done some experiments that suggests that a memory is re-formed in the process of calling it up, which would seem to support the futurist's assertions.
There are a bunch of different definitions for the word memory: recollection, or a process of retaining information over time, or something remembered from the past, or patterns inscribed in the connections of millions of neurons in our brains, etc., but my favorite by far is this: "an echo of something in the past".
Memories, according to those in the know, are not stored in our brains like on a computer, as in, once stored, they are kept intact. For us humans its more like an echo that fades and sounds less and less like the original sound that we first heard. Further more, according to some, once a memory starts to fade, the brain starts to fill in the gaps by borrowing data from other memories in order to make a complete "picture".
If, the first experience a person had of eating a banana for instance happened to coincide with having caught a stomach bug, chances are that the two somehow will go together in that person's memory even if they had nothing to do with each other. Memories are influenced not only by the experience itself but also by other elements such as our mental state at the time of the experience, sounds, smells, weather, and so on. (I have read that smell is a very powerful trigger for bringing forth memories and it certainly seem to be the case for me. The smell of freshly baked buns, or an open fire, or freshly brewed coffee instantly takes me back to my childhood.)
Some memories, whether mere echoes or still very vivid, may be treasures that help us to stay strong, hopeful and motivated, but others may be painful reminders, like thorns in our subconscious that keep on hurting us.
Memories, like with most things human can be complex, confusing and unreliable, and sometimes it may be helpful to question their accuracy. (Did the banana make me sick or was it just a coincidence?)
Extensive research/studies have shown that our memories of events are active interpretations of the past rather than picture-perfect records of them and since memories belong to the past and what happened can't be changed, what we can change is whether we allow our memories to dictate how we will experience and perceive the present.
"Memory, I realize, can be an unreliable thing; often it is heavily coloured by the circumstances in which one remembers." (Kazuo Ishiguro)
About the image: A graphite on paper put through a filter in Photoshop to retain the feel of an old Newspaper photo.
If, the first experience a person had of eating a banana for instance happened to coincide with having caught a stomach bug, chances are that the two somehow will go together in that person's memory even if they had nothing to do with each other. Memories are influenced not only by the experience itself but also by other elements such as our mental state at the time of the experience, sounds, smells, weather, and so on. (I have read that smell is a very powerful trigger for bringing forth memories and it certainly seem to be the case for me. The smell of freshly baked buns, or an open fire, or freshly brewed coffee instantly takes me back to my childhood.)
Some memories, whether mere echoes or still very vivid, may be treasures that help us to stay strong, hopeful and motivated, but others may be painful reminders, like thorns in our subconscious that keep on hurting us.
Memories, like with most things human can be complex, confusing and unreliable, and sometimes it may be helpful to question their accuracy. (Did the banana make me sick or was it just a coincidence?)
Extensive research/studies have shown that our memories of events are active interpretations of the past rather than picture-perfect records of them and since memories belong to the past and what happened can't be changed, what we can change is whether we allow our memories to dictate how we will experience and perceive the present.
"Memory, I realize, can be an unreliable thing; often it is heavily coloured by the circumstances in which one remembers." (Kazuo Ishiguro)
About the image: A graphite on paper put through a filter in Photoshop to retain the feel of an old Newspaper photo.
No comments:
Post a Comment