Xuen Tey - Week #13 - Remembering
Memory is a tricksy concept. Memories are what shape who we are as individuals, our personalities and hobbies, but they are also things that are easily lost or forgotten. Which memories will stay with one forever and which are whisked away on the rivers of the past is a toss-up, a random choice made by our brains. Technically, there probably is a pattern to the choice, but my memory has always been an unreliable and spotty entity.
My childhood memories have always been especially varied compared to my memories of my high school and junior high years. While on one hand, I vividly remember good moments from my field trip in 5th grade, I also remember a random day where all I did was joke about acronyms with my friends. My recollections of childhood aren’t quite a proper picture, moreso a collection of various puzzle pieces where quite a few are missing. Out of all the pieces that are there, only some I vividly recall, while other pieces are more like vague summaries of what occurred, with me having no recollection of the exact details.
Despite this aspect of my own memory, when I’ve asked others about their childhood memories, they seem to have even less memories than me. One of my friends told me she has close to no recollections of her elementary school days, so I wonder if my memory is better than I think it is, or simply that my friend didn’t find elementary school days interesting enough to remember. My theory in reference to this is that strange or interesting events are more likely to stick around in one’s memory because of their abnormality, and since my childhood memories are bursting to full with unusual events, I have a better recollection in contrast to my friends, who have said they had rather average childhoods.
Hi Xuen! It turns out when you recall a memory, you’re recalling a memory of a memory. So technically we are all just trying to piece together fragments when pulling up a moment from your brain storage as memories are constructive (rebuilt from activating current neural pathways) rather than replayed. No wonder things seem to get blurrier and blurrier. The randomness you mention is also interesting; there are names of people who I was once close with that are slowly fading from my memories, but I can remember irrelevant things like a gas station that I passed through during a road trip or a monster I saw on a TV show that scared me for a few days when I was little.
ReplyDeleteIt’s a bummer that I’ll never see the full picture again, to experience what happened one more time and save more little details in my head, but I guess that’s what makes memories so special.
Honestly I don’t remember much about my elementary school days, but I never really made an effort to recall my memories. Like your friends, nothing much happened during my years from first to sixth grade, so perhaps there wasn’t a lot to be stored in this brain of mine.
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ReplyDeleteHi, Xuen. I also (kinda) wrote about childhood memories for my blog this week! Personally, I have a very fond memory of my childhood and am so blessed to have had such a great one. I’m no neuroscientist, but Google lets me know that some people retain more memories compared to others for a variety of reasons, including brain structure and arousal. So, I assume that you're right about how “strange or interesting events are more likely to stick around” in our memories. However, memories aren’t even real. They are reconstructions made by our brain where we recall what happened, and they are easily shaped by our emotions and suggestions. According to the University of Chicago, we often create false memories that never even happened. I find that bizarre. However, does that even matter? If I recall my memories incorrectly, assuming they aren’t important, why is that a bad thing? My brain treats it as the truth and if I believe it to be true in my brain, there is nothing that separates it from a real event that actually happened. Why would it make a difference if I have a false memory of playing on a red swing instead of a blue one? Again, this only applies to memories that are minuscule and not important.
ReplyDeleteHi Xuen! I also find it really interesting that humans tend not to remember their most formative years. Well, I guess it’s because the brain is developing, but even the most grand experiences I had as a child tend to be blurred out of my brain. When I was younger, my family and I went across Europe, and a couple of years later, we explored Dubai and Singapore. The only thing I remember from Europe is that they would serve bland Indian food every single day, and I hated it. For Dubai and Singapore, I only remember my family being stranded in Dubai airport due to a flight overbooking, and even then I don’t fully remember the sequence of events. In highschool I got the opportunity to go back to Europe with my family, and when I told my mom that I barely remember the first time we went, she was shocked! It’s somewhat funny that the most vivid memories from my childhood are me being sick with the stomach flu in fourth grade, or me doing a report on Rudy Giuliani for my New York state project (I do vividly remember getting into a VERY heated argument with my mother as I wanted to do Timothée Chalamet), but it’s both frustrating and somewhat nice that I don’t really remember much from my time as a kid. I can still hold on to that sense of nostalgia. Great read!
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