First posted 21 Jan 2012
The sun rising over the north sea, we’re sat in silent in awe. Framed by the watery horizon and directly in the middle of the picture. The east facing beach allows a fantastic view of this daily event, the sun peeks up above the horizon and illuminates the sea. These are my memories of watching the sunrise on the Norfolk coast. From the sea the breeze is chilly and fresh, a smell that I’ll always love and never forget, it conjures up so many memories of my childhood and late teenage years.
On this occasion we visited the beach after a night out. The hint of morning light on the horizon as we leave one of the fine establishments that we danced the night away in. The brightening horizon and the desire to make those fantastic nights continue for as long as possible. The bright idea to visit the coast sprung into someone’s head. The lure of the beach and the bonus of always having a designated driver meant that we made this particular trip a couple of times that summer.
These memories are very dear to me, but they are hazy, I don’t remember the detail. I remember that most likely it was my wise idea. I remember feeling young, free, independent and happy. The rose tinted spectacles of time and the magic of re-remembering memories.Actually we did have a fantastic time. Those short two years attending sixth form , moving from the quite rural village school. Going ‘up city’, meeting an amalgamation of people from all over, we bonded over double maths, free periods and going to the pool club down the road to avoid double maths! The result was that I didn’t really do very well academically, but I definitely developed other very useful skills. I grew up.
How many of these memories are real memories? How many of them has my brain re-written in an attempt to fit in, sooth my ego and consolidate my ‘self’? Our perception of who we are are is formed from our memories and our earliest memories are held dear, they are said to form when you begin your own self narrative. Using words internally to cement your memories more permanently.
I am unclear about my earliest memory. I have memories from my childhood but I do not quite know which is the earliest. I remember playing in the gorse covered sand dunes of cowboy country, a place that my mother used to take us. I believe this memory is real because I remember that the gorse was ever so spiky and it felt like we’d been allowed to roam free in this giant wilderness. This place is in fact quite small, and when I returned as an adult I was a little disappointed that the giant playground of my childhood had been reduced to a tiny area of dunes.
There are other memories that I have from my early childhood but most of them I believe I have borrowed from my older brother, from stories and from photographs. I do vividly remember plying at my ‘fake’ aunties house. They had a wooden toy trunk and inside there were tin animals. I loved the toy box, I tried to avoid kissing my aunties.
Reconstructions such as these memories are known as autobiographical memories. It does sometimes feel like a set of recordings that we can play back at any time. But as we relive memories in our minds, re-remembering our past, we change details. These memories are thought to be susceptible to changes for a number of reasons. We do it to sooth our ego, fit in with other peoples view of the event or to align the memory with our current ‘self’. It isn’t a bad thing that we do this in our own minds, it is our way of growing and changing as people, we use these memory changes to develop ourselves.
Should we try to change our remembrance of an event. To ease a broken heart or the pain of losing someone? The pain of grief? Or should we try to just let nature take it’s course. There is no doubt that time itself eases the pain of a broken heart. Over time the act of re-watching painful memories could mean that we edit them so that they are not so painful. Adding things that we hadn’t seen before and deleting things that were there originally.Twisting memories to ease our dented egos. Changing our memories of a person so they are no longer quite so happy, or holding to them dearly so that we can remember a person exactly.
In the film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, a service that offers memory cleansing can remove certain specific memories from your mind. Now obviously this is not a reality (yet) and it throws all kinds of questions up into the air regarding the science and the ethics of such a process. But it is an interesting concept to consider.Would you, if you could, remove certain memories? Or perhaps all the memories of one person from your mind? Even when these memories are what make us, well, us. I think the majority of people would agree that they wouldn’t, but there are times when some memories are so painful that it is nice to think that we could get rid of them forever.
The way we change memories is normally fine, except for instance if we share a memory with someone, perhaps a sibling or a partner. Twins and close siblings, when questioned about their memories often share a number of them, not through both experiencing the same thing, but through shared remembering.Couples and close friends also spend a chunk of their time aligning their memories of time together so that they share the same opinion and view of the events. If their recollections of the same event are significantly different it is known as a disputed memory. Disputed memories can cause arguments within families.So, we remember with rose tinted spectacles, we edit our memories as we grow and change as a person. But if you and your sibling or spouse see things differently and it causes problems you perhaps need to think about which bits of these memories have been changed for our own personal aesthetic or egotistical reasons.1056 words
EasterlyMoves 
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