New studies show that memory really isn't as fixed as we like. Everyone knows that, with every retelling, the story changes, and that as people grow older their ability to recount specifics and consistent details fades. Part of that is age related, but part of it is I believe done by choice. You see, we also have selective memory and can choose to remember certain things preferentially to others and certain details because we enjoy them while we eliminate others. Sometimes this is done for innocuous reasons; sometimes it's done for villainous reasons, and sometimes it's done for inexplicable reasons. Memory is a tricky thing, and I'm starting to think that plays a huge role in how people treat each other. We each remember different details and impressions about the same experiences. When I went to Washington DC, I shared my journal for their benefit, but none of my companions reciprocated, and it would have been illuminating and interesting to see what they took from the trip and how they perceived it. All of the accounts might have been true; some of them would not have been useful to me. Then again, most of what I know and remember doesn't seem to be of much use in the real world, and one day I will be but a passing memory to those of you who remain in this audience. Maybe something I do or say or help you realize will persist even if you cannot recollect correctly how you arrived thereat.
When the memory is painful, damaging, traumatic, or similar, often our brains rewrite the memory to protect us. Rather than relive something deleterious, the brain, like the rest of the body, can scab over or skim over details until eventually the neural pathways that linked those events to our memory are so deprived that they can actually die. That kills the memories essentially at least to our conscious recollection, and it allows other memories to take a more prominent role in the December of our life. Over time, the memories fade and diminish, and in the wake of new ones, they loom less litigious on our limited resources until, although they remain, other things overshadow them and outcompete them for our attention and computational capacity. While they do not go away per se, we can rewrite them in order to make them less important. This becomes easier as we age, since the amount of experiences we enjoy grows larger and those experiences hopefully become an increasingly minute fraction of the total memory cassette.
The more time that passes, and the more varied the setting, the more the retelling may vary. Often your brain rewrites a story because you're not sure or because each time you tell it different things seem applicable or vivid or integral to the tale. It doesn't mean that you are lying, but it does mean that you can honestly retell the exact same tale repeatedly and to different people and produce vivid variations or minor detours from the original, all of which are true because none of them contain the entire truth. None of them are dishonest, but they are told to different people at different times to serve different ends, and rather than tell the entire novella, you distill it down for your audience. Other times, as others with whom you experienced something are absent or different people are present to encourage different emphasis, your brain varies the tale because it's not sure what it remembers. For my own part, I have done many things by myself, and if not for the pictures, sometimes I would wonder if I actually did those things or if I just made them up out of thin air! I am not lying; it is truth, and it varies in its telling each time, which is why I keep a journal and write a blog, to keep and set the story straight.
Unfortunately, sometimes the story varies for less than virtuous means. Many people rewrite the story because it was a lie. I wonder sometimes how many people made promises to me that they never intended to keep or told me things that were never true or never going to be true, not to hurt me but because they were hoping that they would be true. When I finally "dumped" a girl, it was hard for me initially to do so since I had made representations; they were contingent, to be sure, and when we were obviously not going the same direction, it no longer mattered what my intentions were. I made those representations based on assumptions of facts that were not true, and so my story didn't need to be either. When my attorney and I left my divorce proceedings, he told me that both she and I would probably pass a lie detector test because, even though she couldn't demonstrate with facts that her story was true, she had told herself the lie so many times that she actually believed it. That's the problem with actively rewriting memory in order to justify and rationalize yourself, because it actually makes meanness in men where once you saw virtue and creates virtue in you where you are actually mean.
For some poor unfortunate souls like me, rewriting the memory doesn't work very well. My memory is sufficiently advanced that I can recollect sometimes entire conversations verbatim even if the other person in that conversation cannot recollect saying a single thing documented or redacted every comment. Even when I can prove they said those things with video, audio, or written transcripts, sometimes I discover that they completely cancelled out those conversations from their memory. I feel like a fraud, but I can prove that it happened that way, even though they deny it. I can remember many wonderful things like quotes and poems and songs and scriptures; I can remember many experiences like hikes and butterflies and pigeon fights and my grandmother's voice or how my Kat would smile with her entire body when she was happy; I also remember that people made promises they didn't keep, that when I am sick or hurt I usually face it alone, and just how miserable I felt to be divorced and then to lose in court and have to pay so...much...money to a woman who didn't even appreciate it. I remember you; I remember everyone who comes; I remember everyone who leaves. Students from past semesters seem stunned that I remember their names. Some of them never really learned mine. It has saved my bacon more times than I can count that I could recollect the details correctly, consecutively, and consistently, because I would not crack and eventually something else gave way.
When I open each class in which we discuss the scientific method I stress the importance of good record keeping and providing good data. Everything in my life that I wish turned out differently did so because I acted on inaccurate or incomplete information. The choice was good and brave and true assuming that the information was, but since it was predicated on bad information now I just look stupid. I wonder sometimes if the people who provided me that information ever feel bad. I hope very few of them misled me on purpose. I know people change and these things happen, but I know that some people have rewritten their memories in order to make me the bad guy. I take time to remember the good times and the better times, because as I grow older and time passes other things drown out memories of times long passed and people dearly considered and possibilities that bolstered my hopes and my dreams. They were people and experiences that enriched and enlarged my life, and so I want them to remain part of my memory even if they have rewritten me to a place of lesser import in their own.
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