Memories are a funny thing. They can be triggered by the least amount of stimuli. A smell, a noise, or even a colour can bring something back to your mind that has been long forgotten. In the regular course of a day we see, hear, taste, and experience countless sensations that our brain’s processes.
Some are trivial, others important. But all of them are stored away in our memory to help form the picture of what happened to us that day. We may not remember specific details, even immediately after their occurrence, but somewhere down the line any one of them could be the trigger that enables us to recall an event.
Although we may censor feelings and sensations during the moment of experiencing on a conscious level, our brains take in everything. There’s no way we could cope with the amount of information inputted otherwise. Take a moment and think about the information that you are recording right now.
Aside from reading this article what else are you experiencing? There is the chair your sitting in and how it feels, the sound of your computer’s fan, the taste of your coffee or what ever your drinking, eating, or smoking at the time. This is all aside from any mood that you may have brought to the computer with you when your sat down to read. If your focus is on what your reading then that will be what you remember of this situation.
But what if your partner came into the room and you have a fight? Or your child hurts themselves and you have to tend to them? Either one of those events will quickly supersede reading and retaining the information in this article. As incidents become more personal, ones with greater emotional investment, they become more important to hold on to, and or make a stronger impression on our awareness.
Therefore if you were to look back on the events of sitting reading this article, you’ll remember being at the computer, maybe that you were reading something, probably not the content, won’t remember how the chair felt on your butt, or what the computer’s fan sounded like. Even though all that information was available you will think of it as the time you and your partner had a fight, or your child skinned her knee.
Article comments
1 - dietdoc
gypseyman writes: "It is better to have good and bad memories then no memory at all."
Reply: I wonder. I have the strangest memory when it comes to my childhood. I have "selective" memory loss. I can see glimmers of my childhood but few concrete memories before the age 10.
You see, I came from what was a growing trend in the 50s and 60s: divorce. My parents divorced when I was about 9. From what I can gather secondhand, it was not a good marriage. Lots of fighting over where the money is going to come from, infedility, etc. My parents then divorced and I went to live with my father and my two sisters went away with their mother. (I am sure there is something very Freudian in that depiction) I never, ever saw my mother or sisters afterwards. It was one of "those kinds" of divorce. My father remarried when I was 10 and, about that age, the fog lifted.
My dad, almost 80, says it is because my mind has suppressed the "bad times." He's right in that I cannot "see" my mother in my mind's eye. But I am not totally convinced this is a good thing. I have the uneasy feeling these uncomfortable memories are lurking, like a computer virus, somewhere in my subconscious mind, and still affecting me today. How? Who knows. Maybe good, maybe bad. Maybe it's just me being me.
My father's new marraige has been a good one and they have stayed married since July 6, 1961. I remember the marraige ceremony vividly, in my grandmother's parlor, my uncles and grandparents dutifully present. We had coconut cake and ice cream afterwards.
My stepmother is a loving, sweet woman who always treated me well and, to this day, is my father's best friend. I love her and appreciate all she has done for my father and me. She rescued a man stuck with a kid in a time when it was not a commonplace thing to do. They both worked veryy hard, saved frugally, and put me through college, medical school. They have always been there for me, with all my many quirks, for 50+ years.
I wish the human brain was not so efficient and pinpoint with its erasure, though. I miss my childhood. My dad can tell me snippets of my history, like having a pet goat in our back yard, but I just smile and pretend that I can remember. One of his favorite memories is the time I watched a Tarzan movie on TV (yes, we had TV then) and promptly went out into the backyard, climbed a tree, put a rope in my mouth and swung out, like Tarzan did. I pulled all of my front teeth out and lay at the bottom of the tree, dazed and, according to dad, laughing my fool head off. At least, that's how dad remmembers it. That's how the "Fable of the Tarzan Tree" goes. And, these sorts of glimpses are all I have of my childhood. I have childhood fairy tales, not memories.
Surely, my conscious mind is protecting me from the trauma of the parental fighting and yelling and, quite possibly, physical violence. I, however, am not so sure that I couldn't handle these images now. I just, sometimes, wish I had a childhood to remember. I wish I could remember my mother's hugs and kisses and, since she is now dead, I can never get that feeling back. The trigger is gone.
All I can do is trust in my mind to do what it, at least, thinks is right for me. Psychotherapy? Hypnosis? Freudian regression therapy? I'll pass. I will be satisfied with tall tales and fleeting flashbacks. I turned out, after all is said and done, semi-normal. Whatever that is. I am a functional, productive, some would say "successful" adult if somewhat ungrounded by time and memories.
But remembering that rope and tree would be a nice piece of the puzzle.
Thanks for the chance to "remember," gypseyman.
Cheers,
Ron