Memory
and Story
“First,
a memory is not a thing…A memory is another bodily process, produced by
physical objects, but itself is as immaterial as the soul…Memories are the heartbeat
of the nervous system…Memory is not only mutable, but…the nature of the brain’s
storage mechanism dictates that memories must change over time.”
Thomas
Lewis, MD, Fari Amini, MD, Richard Lannon, MD (A General Theory of Love, p.103;
Vintage Books, Random House, 2000)
In the
book, A General Theory of Love, the doctors compare memories to heartbeats—they
have a physiological trigger—the nodes in the right atrium of the heart—but on
their own, they have no mass and occupy no space. Memories are much the same—they
exist within the contained space of the brain and are triggered when a synapse
fires. But they are not static, as Freud believed, and they do change over
time, and person to person. Childhood memories are especially subject to question
because, as a child, we rarely have sufficient information or understanding to
draw conclusions or to analyze background possibilities. We remember both good
times and traumatic times but usually without nuance that would be available to
an adult brain.
Some
memories are blazed into our consciousness—like 9/11, they have hyper-significant
impact and are made bolder because of it. Events that shock us and set off the
parasympathetic nervous system response carry a larger charge and are therefore
clearer. But even those memories change with time, and, as we tell the story
over and over, they become layered with elaborations and distortions. The image
that comes to mind is like a drawing that starts out as a stick figure, then as
you give it a face, hair, clothing, and shoes, it changes and no longer looks
like a stick figure. We do that with our memories, too. We put clothes on them.
This is
not to say that memories are all together unreliable, most carry factual
information, but we are likely to subjectively interpret their meaning according
to our history and experience. Most of us have memories that we enjoy and don’t
want to “mess with.” And it’s fun and adds drama to our storytelling to add a
bit of hyperbole to them. That’s all well and good so long as we understand
that memories are mutable—they are not photographic images or snapshots of a
moment in time. We can call them up, or they can be triggered by outside
events, and they should be examined and considered. But, with an understanding
that if we were to ask four other people who witnessed what happened, we might
get four other memories and interpretations. The best we can do is say, “this
is how I remember it.”
Memories
are good jumping-off places for stories. Great storytellers can take a memory,
being it to life in the present moment and make it even better and more intriguing
than the event itself. We human beings are majestic creatures, creative by
nature, and we have eons of oral tradition, and millennia of written stories
that our brains have simply made up. Some of the writers who jump to my mind,
who are or were masters of this include Truman Capote (A Christmas Memory), Pat
Conroy (Prince of Tides), and Louise Penny (The Madness of Crowds). There are too
many to name and we all have our favorites. The thing we don’t seem to realize
is that all our stories are gripping. If we’ve lived a life, we have a story;
we ARE a story. I wonder, how would you tell yours?
In
the Spirit,
Jane
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