Getting lost on Memory Lane. A couple of years ago I met up with a…
By: Kris De Swerdt
Tags: Self Improvement, Memory, Belief Systems, Personal Development, Spirituality

A couple of years ago I met up with a couple of high school friends and one of them related an anecdote about something that took place in school and that involved me as the protagonist. It must have been quite something for him to remember it in such detail after such a long time. The strange thing is that I could not remember it at all, not even vaguely. Even after he described the incident in detail it still did not ring a bell, and to this day it still doesn’t. This made me wonder what a memory really is, why I seem to ‘forget’ some of them and how many others I must have forgotten.

A similar situation where memories seem to diverge is when you share something out of the ordinary that you have read or seen and no one believes you. Then, weeks, months or even years later, those you shared the information with are suddenly talking about that very thing because they saw it somewhere or heard it from some ‘authority’. Surely they’ll now acknowledge that you were right all along. No such luck! As it turns out, they don’t even remember you ever saying anything like that or mentioning it. You feel frustrated or start doubting yourself and wondering whether you might have indeed just imagined it all. So what gives? Why do we remember the same events differently?

According to a study I once read a memory is not really a memory of the actual event itself, even though it looks and feels that way. What actually happens is that we remember the last memory we had of the event. This implies that when the event is something that happened a long time ago, the memory of it is probably quite different from what actually happened, at least in the details. Memories build upon memories. Like when you whisper a sentence in somebody’s ear and they then have to repeat that sentence to another person. When the last person in the chain speaks the sentence out loud it barely resembles the original wording the first person got to hear. Sometimes even the content of the sentence has completely changed and relates in no way to the original sentence.

So when a memory passes through many minds so to speak or when it passes through one person’s mind more often than through another person’s, it is not surprising that the respective versions of the same event may be quite different indeed. Only in my case, not only was my recollection different, it had apparently vanished altogether. Why then do we remember certain things better than others or do not remember them at all?

What if our memories, just like our perceptions, are filtered through our beliefs? Put differently, the memories we have are determined by the person we have become. Who we are, who we see ourselves to be, colors and determines the memories we have. A successful person will mostly have memories of successes she had in the past and how they have led to her current success. How she always knew she would be successful and still remembers all the details about the ventures she started when she was still very young. She will not remember the many times she tried something but didn’t see it through or didn’t succeed. Vice versa for someone who thinks of himself as an unaccomplished loser. He will ascribe his current predicament to events of his past and he will selectively remember those that confirm his current sense of self-worth. (This also puts into perspective the accurateness and completeness of (auto)biographies.)

In my case, the event in high school does not quite align with who I see myself as today. It is hard to imagine I ever did such a thing or was that kind of person. If our memories are filtered by who we perceive ourselves to be then, in a sense, we can alter the past by changing our beliefs about ourselves. When we strive to become more of who we want to be, the memories we have will change. With our new belief system and new sense of self — new identity — will come a new set of memories. We will see the past in a totally different light. Memories are not fixed, the past is not fixed, it is all happening right here and now, in our minds. Always. If you are not currently in life where you want to be then don’t let the so-called ‘past’ define who you see yourself to be. Remember — no pun intended — that your memories are not (always) what they appear to be.

Another approach to this is to directly change our memories by imagining past events to have unfolded the way we would have wanted them to or the way they would have if we already were the person we want to be. If we can vividly imagine a different past, i.e. that those memories feel like ‘real’ memories, our current belief system has to correspond to those new memories. And when our beliefs change our reality changes.

Now, before you dismiss this as New Age woo-woo, ask yourself what memories actually are. Are they not a collection of thoughts and images created in the here and now? Memories, whether they be ‘real’ or made-up, are always imagined. They always play out in our mind. The past is a mental construct and highly subjective. The past — and the future — has no reality of its own. It is not some external place that we can go and visit. We choose the past that conforms to our self-image.