Fractured Reality Redux
Memory is a wonderfully bizarre thing. The first thing I remember was my 3rd birthday - there was a cake made to look like the green train from Thomas the Tank Engine, and the night before I had crept into the kitchen and eaten part of a biscuit forming one of the wheels.
Except that I don't remember this. My memory is based entirely on having heard the story so often during my childhood, along with photographic evidence. In short, it is a false memory. My real first memory is of a corridor in a house in South Africa, where I was at the time. I have an image of a brown wooden floor and a door on the right at the end, to the room I slept in. I'm fairly certain this image is correct, if missing many details.
The same is the case with all my early memories. A plump, smiling teacher in a purple top, a particular conversation about nothing in particular, walking round and between the roots of a tree in the school yard. And so many other incredibly vivid, incredibly inconsequential fragments just like this - out of contexts which have long been forgotten. Why, for example, can I remember looking up at the World Trade Centre from the base, but not the view I saw from the top? What is it that causes us to remember some things but not others? Notably enjoyable or traumatic experiences aside, there seems to be no pattern or sense.
And there's always doubt - do I really remember these things, or is it due to a story I've heard or even told many times? Do photographs cause me to believe I remember things which I actually don't? Is the memory of a memory still a real memory?
A friend of mine's email signature reads "We look at things once, in childhood. The rest is memory." What hope is there then, if one cannot distinguish true memories from those supplied by secondary sources?
None of these questions are likely to be answered any time soon, but my suggestion is this: take lots of photos, because even a manufactured memory is better than nothing at all.
Hmm well, actually I disagree.
The problem is technology has allowed ourselves to slip into a culture of "if I don't have a photograph of it - then it didn't happen" which to me is a great shame.
Yes, by all means, look to the future, but not at the expense of the moment. We all seem too eager nowadays to capture that moment in time rather than actually expierencing it. Having 10,000 digital photos means nothing without the memories. I have seen so many people so distracted and obsessed with "capturing the moment", they lose out on the moment itself. Life is for living not for recording cataloging and storing.
Our brains aren't great recorders of the past, they embellish details, and forget others, but our reliance on technology to store these memories means that our brains are fast becoming lazy/obsolete.
Manufactured memory being better than nothing? I realise this has little to do with the act of taking photos, but tell that to the millions of people every year who are decieved by people who claim that they can speak to their loved ones beyond the grave. Suddenly the guy who remembers his mother in life, now has some assholes manufactured memory of some ghost talking over his shoulder!
My advice, take less pictures, take more special pictures. and treat your brain as it deserves to be treated, instead of not trusting it with storing your life - try and enjoy the moment a bit more. You'll probably be happier for it.
Comment by David, November 24, 2005 @ 4:38 pmIt is really strange sometimes. I remember loads of things from the past, things that happen like more than 10 years ago. I can still see the things so vividly in my mind. But I can't remember things that happen recently. Perhaps I will only remember them 10 years from now.
A lot of things cannot be capture by photos. Perhaps another way out is to write special moments in life down in a journal which can be looked back years later.
It is always nice to look back at old pictures, old journals and reflect on how things have changed and relive the beautiful moments of the past.
But life is too short to keep looking back at the past. Live for the moment and truly experience the present.
Hey, Good Luck for the Advanced tournament finals!
Comment by PJ, November 24, 2005 @ 6:54 pm