As soon as someone turns to me and starts a sentence with Do you remember, my attention drifts away and they’ve lost me for about five seconds. Because in my head I automatically hear music and lyrics that go the 21st night of September. Love was changing the mind of pretenders. I don’t return to the conversation until after my head plays baa dee yah, never was a cloudy day.
Speaking of Earth, Wind and Fire here’s an interesting link regarding our planet, the solar system and beyond. https://9gag.com/gag/aE2pvWp
I wonder sometimes how much of my memory is used capturing song lyrics, movie quotes and other assorted shit that only comes in handy when we’re watching jeopardy. By the way, we’re trying to adopt the Jacksonville rule in our house when Jeopardy is on the tube. No blurting out an answer before Alex is finished reading the question. Also, while I’m on the subject, I automatically hope for failure from any contestant that’s an up high, aggressively repetitive clicker.
Anyway, memory. I was talking about memory.
There’s all kinds of memory. Photographic probably comes to mind for most people but the experts focus on three main types. Long term, short term and sensory. But, the study of how we remember shit has spawned a series of other descriptions that include, explicit, implicit, working, episodic and semantic just to name a few.
I’m not going to purposely talk about any of them though. I don’t feel scientific today and it was enough of an effort just to google the types. I prefer to speculate and I’m not really interested in becoming an expert in methods of recollection.
What I find curious are the differences between what people remember and the quantity and quality of those memories. Some people are way fucking better at remembering than other people. Better in this case, can mean that some people remember more and it can also mean that some people remember more accurately.
Here’s where an evaluation of memory gets a little tricky. Because once the rest of the brain gets involved, then people start developing alternate truths that support whatever position they happen to be holding at the moment. If you repeat your alternate truth enough times, then your brain eventually records events the way you want to remember them, as opposed to how those events really unfolded. That’s how we end up with phrases like memory lapses, supressed memory, fleeting and convenient memory.
We cloud our memory with a fog of perspective, prejudice and presumption and we do it without thinking. As a result, you can have ten witnesses to the same event and ten different recollections of that event. I’m pretty sure from watching enough police shows that the law is much happier when they get corroborating testimony. Because the likelihood of accuracy increases if a few people can remember the same details. Essentially the cops are saying that they’ve learned memory can be faulty. Faulty is not a good thing. Accuracy is sort of important when you’re deciding if somebody is going to the penitentiary.
That’s kinda fucked up if you think about it. Law enforcement is a branch of our justice system, and so a foundation of our democracy basically holds the opinion that a person’s memory might be wrong. I think this says more about people that it says about our justice system. The system acknowledges that memory is subjective and can’t be trusted, unless other testimony or evidence supports the memory.
Which makes me wonder suspiciously about my own memories.
I can’t help but wonder how much of my history that I’ve chosen to save is a construct instead of a reality? How many memories are flawed or incomplete because I made a sub-conscious decision to edit them?
I have no idea and it’s painful to even consider. But, pain aside, there are advantages to accurate recall.
I do know that I’m much better at remembering every little detail of an unpleasant memory. I can remember specific phrases from my antagonists. I can remember tone of voice and facial expressions for heaps of shitty things that have happened to me. Not so much for good things though, which I admit might be a little odd.
My wife on the other hand, has a tendency to dismiss unpleasant memories. If she’s forced to recall them then she tends to get emotional during the recall and her accuracy is hindered by feelings. I don’t have that problem. I’ve already rolled around in the shit of terrible recollections and I’ve made my peace with them. They exist and I’ve examined them in detail. I’ve contemplated what I might have done differently and I’ve filed an action plan in preparation for a recurrence. I suppose that’s why my memory of shitty events is poignant. Because I’ve relived the shit repetitively until I’m satisfied that my performance was sufficient, and there was nothing else I could have done that would have generated a more suitable outcome.
So, if I run into one of those same shit different day scenario’s then I’m prepared. I’ve been over this in my head a few times. It might indeed be the same shit on a different day but this time I’m fucking ready and the outcome is going to be more favorable.
But in order for a secondary plan to work, your memory of the initial situation has to be accurate. Otherwise you’ve prepared a plan B based on faulty data and your new plan is also going to be flawed and ineffective.
So, you have to be brutally honest with yourself. You have to accept that you might have been part of the problem in the first place in order to not repeat history. And in order to do that you need to accurately file away your memories. Gilding unpleasant events in sanctimony and innocence isn’t going to serve you very well when the same shitpile shows up at your door again.