Memories…

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What is memory? Looking past varied artistic and philosophical answers, it is an everyday mental procedure that many of us take for granted. The common belief that our mind records everything like a video camera and it is all in there somewhere isn’t quite true. We remember what we pay attention to in the first place, and we make sense of it in a way that fits with our existing beliefs and understanding of the world (a process known as encoding).

I’m sure that most people are aware of the eyewitness effect, in which seeing a crime doesn’t mean you will recall it exactly. Law enforcement doesn’t consider eyewitness testimony to be infallible, for good reason. Two people seeing the exact same thing can remember it very differently. And even when we have one of those moments of “flashbulb” memory, when something traumatic or vastly meaningful happens, we don’t always remember it as clearly as we believe we do. Studies have shown that people interviewed both immediately and a length of time after a traumatic event such as 9/11 remember things differently than they had first reported. They make sense of the incident in their own mind and assign it significance according to their understanding. While the entire experience will not change completely, the details and the meaning of what we remember can change.

What does this have to do with journaling? Well, a journal is a kind of memory aide. When we write about our experiences as we are going through them we capture our first impressions and our emotional reaction to the events of our lives. We may note down details that otherwise we would forget completely. I have had the experience of going back to an old entry, certain that I was right about something, and rereading my own words which proved me wrong, instead. I had shifted the easily retrievable memory to something more self-justifying, but in reading what I had recorded about that day I realized that in fact, I was not blameless in the relevant situation. It is a shock to be told off by your own past self! But more than just facts or details, journaling in the moment can capture the feel, the texture of your life. When you write about something in retrospect, you may discover feelings about it at the time of writing, but you never know if there is something you are missing, no matter how small.

When journaling like this, we can also see our mind at work. We observe how our very words reveal how our mind changes and shapes experience, and perhaps this gives us a little hope that we can use that power of the mind to improve our outlook consciously. Is the hard thing we’re facing as hard as we believe it is? Looking back we may find other times that we believed we were stuck, but made it through successfully. Regular journaling helps us see the workings of our minds, track patterns, and crystallize memories so that we can revisit them in future. A journal can act as a beautifully ever-present Memory Palace.

And holding on to our personal memories? That is something to celebrate.

Related posts:

1. Moonlight Memories