“No relation of a dream can convey the dream-sensation, that commingling of absurdity, surprise, and bewilderment in a tremor of struggling revolt, that notion of being captured by the incredible which is often the very essence of dreams...it is impossible to convey the life-sensation of any given epoch of one's existence,--that which makes its truth, its meaning--its subtle and penetrating essence. It is impossible. No, it is impossible...we live, as we dream, alone” -Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad
The main gist of this here article is while the emotions surrounding a memory change easily, the events themselves are less easily altered. As a result, by purposefully distracting oneself when a memory pops up, one can gain distance and become emotionally detached from said memories, hopefully allowing one to attach new, more positive emotions to them.
At first, the idea that people might be taught how to alter their memories really bothered me. Then I was ok with it. Then it bothered me again. Now I can't decide.
I generally feel about my memories the same way I feel about my dreams, that they shouldn't be messed with.
This is not, actually, about allowing the natural processes to process, but merely because I find the process interesting. The idea of lucid dreaming is absurd to me. Psychologists claim that changing your dreams may enable you to have more pleasant ones, and that these pleasant dreams manifest in your life as a pleasant attitude and so forth. If I could control my dreams, I doubt I would have the distressing dreams that often lead to a new perspective on myself or life, or sometimes just the beautiful endings my brain makes on its own. I might not ever wake up with that delightful feeling of WTF, which I thoroughly enjoy. My brain is a weird place. I'm interested in how it works. It makes up crazy great stuff all on its own, and my interference just hinders it.
Messing with memory feels the same to me. Memories are, after all, very like dreams. They only exist, really, in our minds. Two people's memories of the same event may be entirely different, depending on their perspective and emotional state. Though events in memories seem to be concrete and straightforward more than in dreams, this really isn't so. How often do we have memories with bits of the middle missing, so it jumps from here to there, or where an intervening moment is somehow fuzzy? They've even done studies that show that existing memories can be altered, or even new memories created. (In one study, people who had never taken a hot air balloon ride were convinced my someone else that they had, and they began to "remember" it, adding more detail and emotion to what they'd been prompted with.) Memories, and the emotions connected to them, are shifting all the time.In an emotional sense especially, hindsight isn't 20/20. Personally, I like watching my emotional memory change over time. If I can help it along so that it is more positive, why shouldn't I? So many memories help to make us stronger. Often, this is because of the new emotional perspective on said memory that occurs in the course of time. The key thing there, though, is the course of time. We're all familiar with the stages of grief, and the idea that time heals all wounds. But what if you could circumvent that? What if you could do it right away? Would you? Could you? In a car?
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