Whither Remembering?

Memories fade & are usually unreliable. Eyewitness accounts are often widely different. Yet we place a huge importance on the process of remembering, & sharing memories - or doing things that create shared memories - is one thing humans enjoy most.

There's a wonderful word, which is a whole other theme, but I can talk about it here, which is "nostalgia," which illustrates the point I am meandering about above very well - it's a yearning, a longing for days past, which many folks remember as much better. A perfect example, which Bill Maher often points out, is people in the United States who wish for the "better days" of the 1950s or before - all the while forgetting (or maybe not?) that there were a great number of Americans back then who were treated as second-class citizens & not allowed basic rights.

(As I wrote that, I realized I could have meant both African-Americans & women!)

As someone who, when his brain was working perfectly fine, used to worry about losing memories, about not being able to remember my life in all its dreary minute detail, I would now horrify the younger me by not caring very much. I lose words when I talk, I have forgotten whole swaths of time, & it doesn't bother me as much as it should. & I know why - it's because I understand that memory itself is unreliable.

I often say - well, let me illustrate what I was going to say with a story. An old roommate was reminiscing living with me about fifteen or twenty years ago. He said, "What I remember most is that you never threw away shampoo bottles - there were always half a dozen nearly empty shampoo bottles around."

I remember no such thing, but that doesn't mean I remember differently. It could certainly be true. So I said what I often say these days when I don't have memories that align with the memories of other people - I said, "It certainly sounds like something I'd do."

You might not remember, but Self Help Radio's show about remembering is on tomorrow morning (that's Monday the 27th) at 7:30 am on the 88.1 fm frequency in Lexington, & online at wrfl dot fm - but if you do forget to remember, it'll be put on the Self Help Radio website at self help radio dot net. I always remember to do that.