Elaine Paige, playing the role of Grizabella in the Broadway musical "Cats", first sung this now popular, definitive song about a once glamorous cat - a celebrity in human terms - now a shell of what she used to be, faded and even irrelevant, pining at the time of yesteryears, defined by the second paragraph of the song:
Memory, all alone in the moonlight
I can smile at the old days
I was beautiful then
I remember the time I knew what happiness was
Let the memory live again
Memory. The one that has taken up residence in our heads is a universal something that even earthworms, jellyfish and clams possess, but is still for the most part a mysterious phenomenon. We all have memories but each is exclusively personal and subjectively so. Only as an individual can anyone know what his or her memory is and no one else can actually even take a peek or look at what's inside another's mind, unless the person who harbors the memories says what it is, or more precisely what he or she remembers, or what he or she is willing to share. "Knowing" one's memory too is tenuous at times. And there lies another mystery. Why, how we remember is one thing. What we remember is another. How accurately one remembers is one more to add to the complexity.
Memory is essential. It is, above everything else, the very first tool for survival. How organisms find food, seek shelter, avoid danger are only possible because they remember. Why one mammal will run after prey but flee from predators is that delicate balance between life and death in the natural world. In a nutshell memory is at the very foundation of what defines life. But it is likely the most complex of all the attributes of being alive. And in death that is how we will be remembered by others. But it is their memories of you. All of what you yourself remembers, all the memory you have accumulated will have all gone with you. It is intriguing, so mystifying, it can be frustrating, even.
Is memory some kind of record keeping the brain organizes for you? Is it a scrapbook it puts together for you to look at from time to time? Is it the Post-It notes that your brain puts on an imaginary bulletin board for you to refer to every now and then? Are they Post-It notes of mistakes you should avoid in the future, a reference of the right things you've done and ought to do each time the same circumstances are encountered or are they the checklist of bad ones to be avoided? It is apparently all of those, including the ones when you felt harmed by others. And they are there to remind you later when you get the opportunity to return the "favor". Then there are good ones too to remind you to be grateful to others or just to be reminded how fortunate you had been where others were not. It is all of those, in fact.
Having thought about all of those, memory might seem this perfect complement to everything that exemplifies us from other creatures. You see we have this ability to not only review and analyze but to critique our memories as well, that no other creature is able to do. And why we do this is because we know or it had been pointed to us on more than one occasion that perhaps our memories are not so perfect after all. And indeed, we know too well memories are not perfect. So, our brain then is not infallible? And if it is not, why? See, here is the thing. Certain people do have such a prodigious memory, others known to have total recall, though limited along narrow subjects, such as, cards and numbers and calendar dates, etc. But often these folks have deficiencies in other areas of memory management or even normal social behavior. The extreme "savants" are often saddled with other inabilities that most normal people are able to do, like empathy and sorrow that "gifted" individuals can be oblivious to. So, what gives?
The brain is not made for total recall then? Or, is it that our mind (there is a difference) is not? It is common knowledge, true or not, that squirrels can recall every nut they bury in the ground and that during lean times they go and find them, even after a very long while. One biologist, perhaps another one of those with time to spare and with grant money to spend, took the time to find out. It was a very scientifically sound method she used and she found that squirrels can only recall 90%, give or take 10%, of every buried nut. That is, of course very critical in the realm of ecosystems. The oak tree, for example, is assured that at least 10% of the acorns it produced will germinate and perchance grow to become another oak tree. The tree's investment paid off. The squirrels that help to spread the acorns get rewarded by 90% of the nutrients the tree produced, but they would, conveniently or not, forget to find some of them, particularly in places far away from the parent tree. Everyone benefited. Thanks to the fact that perhaps the squirrels brain is not so perfect.
What about our brain? It is true that eyewitnesses to a crime sometimes differ in their recollection, even if their observations were concurrent and even from the same vantage point. Is it because the brain is not designed for total recall? For sure, from the beginning of time, the brain did not anticipate to solve algebraic equations and integral calculus or remember chemical valences, or baseball statistics or which monarch followed whom during the entire reign of the Tudors. That is why we invented computers, wrote text books and posted on Wikipedia.
Perhaps there really is a better explanation for why the brain does not do total recall so well. For one thing, it is good at filling gaps, accurately or not, and it can be manipulated to harbor false memories, like people who honestly believed, once enticed into believing, that they saw or even hugged Bugs Bunny when they last visited Disney World years before. That can't be true, of course, because Bugs Bunny is not a Disney character and there was no way it would have survived ten seconds before Disney security and cameras found it loitering in the Magic Kingdom. But such suggestions of false memory succeeded in infiltrating unsuspecting folks who unwittingly believed their implanted memories.
There is an upside in all of these. Forgetting resolves a lot of clutter in our brain. The brain is good too at erasing bad memories. Sometimes the brain takes it to extreme and people get amnesia - almost erasing an entire period of their experiences to avoid remembering one horrific trauma. It is like a mental check valve, which is good, gone haywire that turned into a total shut-off valve. But amnesia is real but thank goodness it can be reversible. Then sometimes too the brain goes way over active on certain things. Inexplicably, people develop phobias. They don't go on dates on Friday the 13th, athletes go through some weird routine to improve or even try to insure victories with no apparent basis, other than to wear the same pair of socks for every game so as not to break the streak. The brain can also cause a mental loop that propels obsessive/compulsive behavior. But there are some great things the brain does with its ability.
Memory. It is more than a survival tool. We may yet discover other good tricks the brain can do for us. Meanwhile, there are really great things the brain does to use memory as a coping mechanism. More than that the brain provides us something much more than just the ability to remember.
Memories become these wonderful companions for many of the older folks who, by no choice of their own, live by themselves or feel alone even when there are people around them in nursing homes or around family members who choose to ignore them. The memories of these folks are their friends who from time to time call on them from the deep recesses of their now distant past, to comfort them and assuage the loneliness. Memories, accurate or not, are now flush with vivid colors and countless beautiful moments, that are the video and audio the brain sometimes put together for the person no longer able to experience the world out there. Wheelchair bound or not, the brain takes the elderly to places he or she can no longer go to. Memories, sometimes made fun by others for the repeating loops of the elderly's tales, are actually the brain's gift to us.
Let me repeat the two stanzas from the song, one more time,
Memory is essential. It is, above everything else, the very first tool for survival. How organisms find food, seek shelter, avoid danger are only possible because they remember. Why one mammal will run after prey but flee from predators is that delicate balance between life and death in the natural world. In a nutshell memory is at the very foundation of what defines life. But it is likely the most complex of all the attributes of being alive. And in death that is how we will be remembered by others. But it is their memories of you. All of what you yourself remembers, all the memory you have accumulated will have all gone with you. It is intriguing, so mystifying, it can be frustrating, even.
Is memory some kind of record keeping the brain organizes for you? Is it a scrapbook it puts together for you to look at from time to time? Is it the Post-It notes that your brain puts on an imaginary bulletin board for you to refer to every now and then? Are they Post-It notes of mistakes you should avoid in the future, a reference of the right things you've done and ought to do each time the same circumstances are encountered or are they the checklist of bad ones to be avoided? It is apparently all of those, including the ones when you felt harmed by others. And they are there to remind you later when you get the opportunity to return the "favor". Then there are good ones too to remind you to be grateful to others or just to be reminded how fortunate you had been where others were not. It is all of those, in fact.
Having thought about all of those, memory might seem this perfect complement to everything that exemplifies us from other creatures. You see we have this ability to not only review and analyze but to critique our memories as well, that no other creature is able to do. And why we do this is because we know or it had been pointed to us on more than one occasion that perhaps our memories are not so perfect after all. And indeed, we know too well memories are not perfect. So, our brain then is not infallible? And if it is not, why? See, here is the thing. Certain people do have such a prodigious memory, others known to have total recall, though limited along narrow subjects, such as, cards and numbers and calendar dates, etc. But often these folks have deficiencies in other areas of memory management or even normal social behavior. The extreme "savants" are often saddled with other inabilities that most normal people are able to do, like empathy and sorrow that "gifted" individuals can be oblivious to. So, what gives?
The brain is not made for total recall then? Or, is it that our mind (there is a difference) is not? It is common knowledge, true or not, that squirrels can recall every nut they bury in the ground and that during lean times they go and find them, even after a very long while. One biologist, perhaps another one of those with time to spare and with grant money to spend, took the time to find out. It was a very scientifically sound method she used and she found that squirrels can only recall 90%, give or take 10%, of every buried nut. That is, of course very critical in the realm of ecosystems. The oak tree, for example, is assured that at least 10% of the acorns it produced will germinate and perchance grow to become another oak tree. The tree's investment paid off. The squirrels that help to spread the acorns get rewarded by 90% of the nutrients the tree produced, but they would, conveniently or not, forget to find some of them, particularly in places far away from the parent tree. Everyone benefited. Thanks to the fact that perhaps the squirrels brain is not so perfect.
What about our brain? It is true that eyewitnesses to a crime sometimes differ in their recollection, even if their observations were concurrent and even from the same vantage point. Is it because the brain is not designed for total recall? For sure, from the beginning of time, the brain did not anticipate to solve algebraic equations and integral calculus or remember chemical valences, or baseball statistics or which monarch followed whom during the entire reign of the Tudors. That is why we invented computers, wrote text books and posted on Wikipedia.
Perhaps there really is a better explanation for why the brain does not do total recall so well. For one thing, it is good at filling gaps, accurately or not, and it can be manipulated to harbor false memories, like people who honestly believed, once enticed into believing, that they saw or even hugged Bugs Bunny when they last visited Disney World years before. That can't be true, of course, because Bugs Bunny is not a Disney character and there was no way it would have survived ten seconds before Disney security and cameras found it loitering in the Magic Kingdom. But such suggestions of false memory succeeded in infiltrating unsuspecting folks who unwittingly believed their implanted memories.
There is an upside in all of these. Forgetting resolves a lot of clutter in our brain. The brain is good too at erasing bad memories. Sometimes the brain takes it to extreme and people get amnesia - almost erasing an entire period of their experiences to avoid remembering one horrific trauma. It is like a mental check valve, which is good, gone haywire that turned into a total shut-off valve. But amnesia is real but thank goodness it can be reversible. Then sometimes too the brain goes way over active on certain things. Inexplicably, people develop phobias. They don't go on dates on Friday the 13th, athletes go through some weird routine to improve or even try to insure victories with no apparent basis, other than to wear the same pair of socks for every game so as not to break the streak. The brain can also cause a mental loop that propels obsessive/compulsive behavior. But there are some great things the brain does with its ability.
Memory. It is more than a survival tool. We may yet discover other good tricks the brain can do for us. Meanwhile, there are really great things the brain does to use memory as a coping mechanism. More than that the brain provides us something much more than just the ability to remember.
Memories become these wonderful companions for many of the older folks who, by no choice of their own, live by themselves or feel alone even when there are people around them in nursing homes or around family members who choose to ignore them. The memories of these folks are their friends who from time to time call on them from the deep recesses of their now distant past, to comfort them and assuage the loneliness. Memories, accurate or not, are now flush with vivid colors and countless beautiful moments, that are the video and audio the brain sometimes put together for the person no longer able to experience the world out there. Wheelchair bound or not, the brain takes the elderly to places he or she can no longer go to. Memories, sometimes made fun by others for the repeating loops of the elderly's tales, are actually the brain's gift to us.
Let me repeat the two stanzas from the song, one more time,
I remember the time I knew what happiness was
Let the memory live again
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