forget-fool

A thought stopped me today.

I stood in the middle of some one's lawn, leaning on my rake - stopped for a moment.

Apparently memory is something we create. It is not like a computer or a file-cabinet system where past events get categorised and stored in our mind, from where we retrieve them whenever we please. Every time we 'remember' an event - we are (re)creating it. We imagine and thus create the smell, the sound, the feeling and so on. And each time we 'remember' or recall an event, we subsequently get further and further away from the reality of the original experience. So, the more we recall an event, the more we bastardise the reality of that moment.

I have always been bad at remembering specific events, or specific parts of events - instead my memory consists of the 'feeling' I felt at the time. For example, I can't tell you what happened in a movie that i have seen, but i will know to recommend it or not, because i can describe in detail how i felt after watching it, and how much i enjoyed it.

One memory that i am able to recall with specificity is the night I broke up with my girlfriend of four years. All i remember is her teeth gnashing and saliva dripping and mucus bungee-jumping form her nose to her chin. her head was buried in her arms and she was shaking her head and pleading repeatedly 'no, no, no - i don't agree, this is your decision, but i don't agree'. Then when i left her house, I turned around to see her silhouette - sitting on a chair, alone in her room - saturated with tears, loneliness and shock. I felt so guilty about hurting this wonderful young woman, that i punished myself by replaying this night in my mind, over and over. And each time i dredged up the memory, it became more and more of a nightmare as the hurt i inflicted on my Ex was more elaborate and devastating. But how much of these flashes of memory are true and how much is my creation, powered by my guilt?

If it's true that memories are merely something we (re)create, then what does that mean for a sense of identity, or personality? The string of memories i have are the only thing that inform and give me a sense of identity. If these are all just made up, then identity is just something i have created in whichever way i see fit and is potentially completely distorted from reality.

Getting back to today thought - i was stopped by this thought;

the more you recall an event, the further away you get from the truth and reality of that moment. Conversely, the less you recall an event, the more accurate it will be, because the less you recall it, the less it's distorted. But here's the killer - a scientist in the US (i can't remember his name) tested and proved this theory and excavated an even more astonishing conclusion - the people with the most accurate memories, are the people who suffer from Amnesia. Because their capacity to recall events is tarnished, the memories stored in their brains are much more accurate, than those in a 'normal' functioning brain.


Stop.