Pat Bean's blog

Was the sky tinged with yellow when I painted this scene or did I only remember it this way? — Art by Pat Bean

          “The function of memory is not only to preserve but also to throw away. If you remembered everything from your entire life, you would be sick.” – Umberto Eco

Morning Chat about Memory

          Discussions of past events with family members and long-time friends were once awkward for me because I often didn’t remember things happening the same way the story-tellers did.

As time passed, I began noticing I wasn’t alone in this respect. I often heard people, especially husbands and wives and siblings, interrupt conversations by saying: “That’s not the way things happened.”

It was especially true in my own family so full of strong personalities.

I eventually came to realize that each individual experiences life differently, and even though the stories differ, each person is telling the truth as they remember it.

A compliment given by one person to two people might be received as just that by one of them, and as a snide remark by the other. I use that as an example because I’ve long been a person who ends up with her foot in her mouth rarely knowing why.

Meanwhile, as a long-time journal keeper who has recently begun rereading her words from the past, I got a good comeuppance this morning when I was doing just that. My own memory of an incident I thought I remembered clearly didn’t jibe with what I had written of the event the day it happened. My memory had several specifics quite wrong.

The only thing I could do about it was to laugh at myself. And laughter always makes life a bit easier to digest.

Bean Pat: Avoiding traffic jams https://johawkthewriter.com/2020/01/07/avoiding-traffic-jams-and-connecting-with-the-fast-lane-daily-quote/#like-5959 Making use one’s time is a smart idea.

Pat Bean is a retired journalist who lives in Tucson with her canine companion, Scamp. She is a wondering-wanderer, avid reader, enthusiastic birder, Lonely Planet Community Pathfinder, Story Circle Network board member, author of Travels with Maggie available on Amazon, and is always searching for life’s silver lining.