I rifle through a drawer, pull out an old journal, and skim. I do this from time to time, and my motivations are varied.
I may be feeling sentimental, wanting to dip into the days when my boys were younger. I may be seeking the solace of a good memory, or the specifics of some situation to inform a current decision.
I’m looking for a record of my moments, my reasoning, and the experience of my outcomes.
But when I find what I’m searching for, memory and experience may clash, or memory may have altered my interpretation of the experience. Only in revisiting tangible proofs of what took place – photographs, a video clip, or in this case – my words in a journal – can I readjust my appreciation of an event and its aftermath.
I came across an article in Psychology Today that touches on this phenomenon in the context of consumer behavior. Yet it sheds light on the nature of human experience itself, which I find instructive in considering relationships.
According to psychologist Peter Noel Murray, PhD, in “How Memories of Experience Influence Behavior,”
a consumer could have a great experience with a product or service, but only have bad memories when thinking about it later… Let’s say you are on vacation and have dinner at the best restaurant recommended to you… The experience is fantastic. However, when clearing the table the waiter spills coffee into your lap. Odds are that the coffee spill will degrade your memory of the food and wine, no matter how exceptional you otherwise would have remembered them.
Dr. Murray goes on to emphasize that the memory of your experience will overshadow the experience itself, and if the memory is bad enough, it may wipe out the experience altogether.
Spillage on Marital Memories?
While I consider this useful information in business, I find it equally enlightening when it comes to relationships.
If you consider marriage and divorce, can three years of misery wipe out ten good years that came before – right down to the specifics of dinners out, vacations enjoyed, and intimate moments? Can improved interaction in the years that follow lessen the effect, by allowing some of the good experiences to be recalled?
Dr. Murray references behavioral economist and psychologist Daniel Kahneman, whose research reflects human tendencies to favor the Remembering Self over the Experiencing Self which, I might add, puts into question the viability of our contemporary preoccupation with “living in the moment.”
The Experiencing Self, the Remembering Self
The article continues:
The Experiencing Self lives in the present, processing current inputs and information from the physical and social environment. Life is a continuous series of moments of experience. Once these moments are passed, however, most are lost forever… the psychological presence of an experience lasts about three seconds.
Shall I repeat that? The psychological presence of an experience lasts about three seconds. Is this part of why our storytellers have always been so important to us? Is this what drives some of us to document our lives – so they feel more solid?
Dr. Murray goes on to interpret Dr. Kahneman:
These experiences should make up the story of our lives. But they don’t… The story of our lives is written by The Remembering Self.
Memory and Self-Image
I have specific memories of global events, particularly in the late 60s and early 70s. Does that mean my awareness of the world was growing, or that they touched my life in some more personal way?
I have recollections of my childhood that are fairly disagreeable, and equally, blank spaces for extended periods in which there is, well… nothing. Does that mean I’ve erased entire chapters of my life that are unpleasant?
Perhaps. But there are good recollections as well, and a handful of pictures (which spark memory), not to mention writing that also indicates what “felt real” to me at the time.
I have much stronger recollections of my marriage, of course. And I was always struck by how easily my ex-husband could refashion so many years to suit his image of himself.
Then again, I could say the same of me.
While I don’t paint myself as blameless in the demise of our marriage – I wasn’t – we all righteously recreate our self-image, diminishing our moral lapses and shabbier behaviors, in order to live with ourselves. And yes, some people seem to do so far more often and more extensively than others.
Writing our Lives, Living our Lives
There are times my children were annoyed at the frequency of my snapping pictures as they played, and in particular, as they played with their dad. While my husband traveled a great deal, when he was home I wanted to capture every moment I could, and bask in my sense of good fortune at having a family, even if it wasn’t what I imagined it would be.
I was in fact documenting for the purposes of convincing myself that everything was fine – creating tangible proofs that there were people in my life and the life was good. That so many photographs exist of my children with their father could lead some to believe he was here and involved more than he actually was. The photographic documentation distorts the reality, or rather, the appearance of reality.
This is also an example of what occurs when you write your life as you’re living it, which has been my habit for 30-some years, no doubt what writers tend to do even when there is no pen or paper in hand.
These decades of journals are surprisingly utilitarian: they serve to trigger more accurate memories, more faithfully documenting events as they were unfolding; they furnish fuller context – to the extent that I fairly described it, which allows me to see a more balanced picture. Generally, these accounts took place before memory could distort, degrade or dismiss the texture of experience.
Making Sense of Contradictions
Contradictions are part of life and in many cases, enrich it.
So can we accept that in the wake of memory-influenced experience, reality may become distorted? Our experience of experience may not be wholly “accurate” and so-called facts that contradict memory may skew our perceptions? Perhaps memory is the superior watchdog, when you know the full story.
My takeaway?
Experience and memory are powerful companions. The body will lodge the emotion of our experiences, and we need to pay attention. Beyond that, in the light of time’s reshaping of experience, we should assess each situation – personal or otherwise – with as broad, as keen, and as forgiving a view as possible.
And if that sounds contradictory, it is – and it isn’t. Didn’t we just clarify that there are many sides to an experience, and always variations to our movable truths?
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Most things never happened.
The first thing I thought of as I read this was revisionist history. Countries have done it throughout history but I think that people do it to. I am not sure it goes along with the study though? It seems that, if something is displeasing to us, we have the ability to live our life without that ever having existed – we can just remove it from the past. And if we can get other people to believe this story or version of the past… then the event, the happening, never took place. I never believed this to be possible until I watched two adults collectively do it.
My daughter got sick after eating at a popular chain. Although we never had negative experiences there before and weren’t having them at the time, we have not returned to that chain as that memory colors the memory. A fabulous vacation is often marked by something that wasn’t so fabulous at all.
Odd that we do that… I also wonder if we don’t live as much in the present as we do living a future that may or may not happen.
Revisionist history. That is a whole other matter to live with, isn’t it, TE.
The point about some small negative making the most lasting impression on memory is intriguing though. I wonder if it’s a LIFO / FIFO sort of thing, wherein if it’s the last event in a series (as in the example of spilled drink at the end of a fine meal) if that matters, whereas something negative which is followed by good experience is more “absorbed” into a whole.
The article didn’t specifically talk about a positive being able to reshape the story, so I’m also wondering if it’s human nature to hang on to negatives in some fashion, more than positives.
I think about this issue a lot in the context of the two long-term boyfriends I had before meeting my husband. It look me a long time to remember the good years of those relationships. Neither ended terribly so there was no need for the resentment and ire that I carried with me. Perhaps this was a place where I revised my own history to help explain and understand my present?
I hear you, Kristen. Of course, I might apply the same logic to teenagers. The fact of their worry-making-sleep-depriving-stress-inducing behaviors (must we deem those “bad” or simply “normal?”) encourage us to break away from them, just as they want to break away from us toward independence.
That may be a stretch, relative to some of the points in the article, but I do think when there is conflict or negative emotion of any sort as the last impression, it dulls earlier impressions – at least, in the case of the tough teen years, until Empty Nest starts pulling on the heart strings.
I think about this often as I write about my past. How much of what I write is factually true, and how much is my own mind trying to make sense of things? As I ponder the possibility of writing a book I’m now thinking about attempting to write it as fiction (which my mother-in-law asserts is what I write anyway) instead of as autobiography. I have found that sometimes twisting little parts of a true story can make it more true than if I was just documenting the facts.
I have also discovered with time that my memory changes. For instance, I can remember more positive things about my mother now than I did in the last three years of her life. Somehow it would seem that my experiential self comes back later, sometimes years and years later, to exert itself and remind me that not everything about every negative experience was entirely without some redemption.
I agree with Chloe in that our perception is everything. We may keep journals, and I do, and have often reread details I’d long since forgot, buy my perception of what was happening, are mine. If my ex, for example, were to have kept a journal, his account would be different. Sometimes I read things from when i was a teenager and I can’t believe it was me. I was so…….young. It helped me be patient with my daughters when they were teens and so very, they thought, wise.
And photos? They always remind me to enjoy how I look at the time. I’ll look back at them 10 years from now and remark how young I looked.
I take photos of my children crying and of them fighting. I make movies our our videotaped moments in which they pause the posing and grinning for interludes of screaming.
I just wish there were photos of me with them so it doesn’t seem to those revisiting photos that I wasn’t there.
It’s bothered me for some time that I have very few memories of growing up pre-high school. I have the occasional flashback, but really nothing of any significance. And that really makes me sad. And I don’t know why my recollections of my childhood aren’t there. There wasn’t any trauma or abuse. Mine was a rather uneventful childhood…maybe that’s the problem!
It’s an interesting question, Lisa. (Any psychologists / neuroscientists care to pop up and comment?)