CAN YOU TRUST YOUR MEMORY?

 I used to attend Indian classical dancing classes when I was 9 years old. I have vague memories of going every weekend, a uniform and trying to convert Bengali notes into English. The teacher was very strict. The dance school was above a grimy, noisy metal workshop. The sessions were tough and quite difficult. I remember coming home with trembling legs after every class due to all the practice. I quit the classes after a couple of years. I remember it was because I found it quite tough and wasn’t really interested in it. However, twenty years later, as I was talking to my mother about it, she said I quit dance because I wasn’t good at it. I was so surprised because that wasn’t what I remembered. However if Mom said it, it must be true, so I changed my belief about the reason I quit dancing. I tend to forget the past quite a lot – especially events and occasions, so I trusted her memory more than mine. As time passed, I found many inconsistencies in my mother’s memories about events in the past. That’s when I realised something, Mom doesn’t remember everything. If that was the case, was her memory of the reason for me quitting dance was really true? This realization gave me immense relief.

You would wonder why is it that I am dwelling on something so trivial and in the past. Well, because it contributes to the “story” or “narration” of my life and it decides how I think about myself, which in turn dictates my actions and belief system. Everything I do and think now, is due to these tiny, trivial data points which act like road map or guiding beacon. So this narrative of our life needs to be accurate. It cannot depend on inconsistent data given by my own memory or my mother’s. There is no way to go back in time and understand why I decided to quit dance. But the judgement which arises from the reasons behind the action, will shape what I think about myself. So there are two paths for me. Either I completely disregard this data point as having any bearing on my character or I change the narrative to something which suits my future goals.

Sometimes I feel that it is quite good that I forget the past so easily. Because memories are inconsistent. They are not completely true. We twist them into something either to suit a narrative we choose or to browbeat ourselves; unintentionally. So when I don’t remember whether I am good at dance or not, next time an opportunity to dance comes up, I would participate without any hesitation or baggage or pride about it. Can we live like that? Fresh page every time, every day? Would that be easier or worthwhile?