Wednesday, January 19, 2011

The Murkiness of the Mind


I can't remember most of my life, and I find this unusual. I think about the fact that I have lived in 5 different places in the past 7 years, and I wonder what I have forgotten. I have random images in my mind of places I've been or things that I've done...but it doesn't feel like it was me. It's like watching a blurry movie of someone else. Sometimes I wish I was like Sheldon Cooper (Big Bang Theory), with a didactic memory so that I could remember everything I had ever done. Of course, memory itself is often flawed. Many things we remember didn't actually happen as we remember. There was a study done that showed if people were asked about a specific memory (that they had actually never experienced) they would "remember" experiencing it and be able to very vividly describe the place, etc. Of course these weren't things like being held at gun point or being in prison. They were things like being lost when they were children or going to play in a park . Interesting what are minds are capable of.

1 comment: