Thinking about thinking

I rolled over for what felt like the hundredth time in the early hours of an otherwise unremarkable morning. It's 3AM. I'm wide awake. Counting sheep didn't work. I needed another plan to fall asleep. An idea popped into my head that might be able to bore me to sleep. I tried to remember, in as much detail as possible, what I ate last Tuesday.

Was it eggs with coffee, or did I have tea? I’m sure I ordered chicken for lunch, but now I can’t remember. I even struggled to recall the people I interacted with that Tuesday.

I became deeply uncomfortable as an uninvited realisation dawned on me.

Have you ever wished for a word to exist? That morning, I wished there was a word to describe the moment you're finally able to verbalise something you've known to be true for a long time. It’s knowledge close enough to know it's there, but out of reach to sufficiently label it. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, it's crystal clear and finally within reach. A cognitive revelation spilled over into a verbal epiphany.

The dictionary entry I was looking for does not exist. But if it did, I would use it to describe my realisation: You and I will forget almost everything. Everything we see, feel, hear, touch, smell, or taste. Every conversation and every moment. People, places, and perspectives. Unrecorded and left to the mind to remember, it will almost certainly disappear; lost somewhere among millions of synapses in your brain.

You don't believe me? Try it. Try thinking about what you did a week ago. A month. A year. Fairly quickly you'll only have limited vignettes of memories of days long past. Unprompted, you might feel inadequate at recalling memories on demand. We know, of course, that we have millions of pieces of information in our heads. But does their existence matter if we cannot recall them at will?

This troubled me deeply. Partly because most people seem unaware that they are forgetting their life. In your twenties, it’s nearly impossible to recall your childhood perfectly. This suggests that with each passing decade we may largely forget the one before. Post-panic, I became curious about the underlying mechanisms. How does our memory work and why do we forget?

The basics of memory

The aim of this piece is not to describe the intricacies of memory. There are people vastly more knowledgeable on the subject. The best example I can think of, for those interested in the topic, is Remember by neuroscientist Lisa Genova. It is important, however, to discuss some key concepts about memory. Otherwise, I cannot effectively share some powerful ideas about our inability to remember.

Learning a skill and retaining information are two different types of memory. They are called declarative (explicit) and non-declarative (implicit) memory.

Declarative memory involves information that can be consciously recalled, such as facts and events. Its subcategories are episodic memories, memories of specific events or experiences, including contextual details like time and place, and semantic memory, general knowledge about the world, such as facts, concepts, and meanings.

Non-declarative memory involves memories that are not consciously recalled but influence behaviour and performance. It includes procedural memory, the knowledge of how to perform various actions and skills such as riding a bike or playing an instrument, which are executed automatically.

Think about it this way: you may know that the capital of France is Paris (semantic memory), but you might not remember where you learned that fact (episodic memory). Similarly, you might be able to ride a bike perfectly (non-declarative procedural memory) but not be able to explain the exact sequence of moves required to do so (semantic memory) or even where you first learned to ride a bicycle (episodic memory).

These systems can act quite distinctly from one another, as seen in the curious case of Patient H.M. who suffered severe amnesia after surgery to cure epilepsy. After the surgery he, was unable to form new memories for life events or facts. However, he had a normal ability to learn new motor skills, like mirror drawing, but would not remember the training sessions even the next day.

To complicate matters more, we might be convinced of our episodic memories, but they are probably wrong. One famous study by Ulric Neisser and Nicole Harsch illustrated this. They asked college students to write down their memories of the Challenger shuttle explosion 24 hours after the event and then again 3 years later. About a quarter of the participants made significant errors in their recall, and some even failed to recognise their original descriptions.

To put all of this into context, we need to look at the Forgetting Curve, which hypothesises the decline of memory retention over time. This curve helps us better understand short- and long-term memory, and our ability to create lasting memories or retain specific information. By design, our brains need to forget, and only with deliberate and repeated effort do we remember things. This makes sense because we would be unable to function properly if we had to remember everything.

Remember not to forget

As brief as the explanation of memory was, it hopefully provides us with a good foundation. Fortunately, a perfect understanding of memory is not necessary for improving, or coming to terms with, our inability to remember.

There are many resources available on how you can improve your memory. Often these guides are geared towards improving semantic memory—remembering facts, concepts, and meanings. Undeniably it's good to become better at semantic memory, but my focus in this piece is episodic memory. I have come to care deeply about the all-too-human experience of forgetting life’s moments.

To illustrate this as clearly as possible, remembering that you’ve been to Paris is an example of semantic memory. Recalling the enormity and detail of the Eiffel Tower, the smell emanating from a patisserie, and the brief interactions you had with the French people is episodic. The fading of these episodic memories is what I find so troubling.

I want to share three ideas—some practical and some abstract—that I've used to navigate this specific loss of memory. There are ways to deliberately retain memories, or at least know where to find them.

Every day has a storyworthy moment

"In searching for stories, I discovered that my life is filled with them. Filled with precious moments that once seemed decidedly less than precious. Filled with moments that are more storyworthy than I’d ever imagined." - Matthew Dicks

Matthew Dicks wrote an incredible book called Storyworthy. There is one key idea in the book that I've used since November 2021 to help me remember my life by accident.

It goes like this: Every day, ask yourself, “What was the most storyworthy moment of my day?” and write it down. Aim for 30 to 50 words to keep it low friction. I think that's how I've been able to not miss a single day. I'm currently on page 204 of an A5 notebook. Initially, I only wanted to find memorable moments in my day, but unintentionally this has become an incredibly powerful tool for triggering memories. I can jump to 8 July 2022 and recall something that I would almost certainly have forgotten otherwise.

This exercise also trains your mind to spot memories to record later. Being intentional about remembering events helps us to recall those memories later.

Our lives are filled with stories, and we can become better at finding them and remembering them. It takes considerable effort, but I'm convinced that one day I'll be grateful to page back 20 years and remember the most storyworthy moment that happened that day.

So the first idea is this: Remembering the beautiful moments of life takes consistent, deliberate effort.

Not all memories live in our heads

"They say you die twice. Once when you stop breathing and the second, a bit later on, when somebody mentions your name for the last time." - Banksy

It's usually late at night that I think about this Banksy quote. Partly because I think it falls short of a bigger insight. Perhaps the second, the later on bit, should have been when you are thought of for the last time by someone on earth. That seems more accurate, because you (or rather, how they interpret you) live in the memories of the people you interact with.

This insight is important because remembering specific details about experiences is shared with other people. Suppose you meet up with a friend from university after a few years apart. There's something magical about recounting memories and they ask, "Remember that time we..." to which you reply, "Oh yeah! I completely forgot about that." Of course, you didn't forget in the sense that that memory isn't in your brain anymore. You just didn't have the right cue to recall it.

Having this perspective affects my way of engaging with other people. I want to create memorable, shared experiences. But they're not mine. I do not "own" the experiences I have with family, friends, and other people. The experiences we shared should exist in their minds differently than in mine. When we reminisce, we can paint the picture together.

It seems decidedly important that we consider the impact of memory not solely residing in our own minds. All of us live eternally or ephemerally inside the minds of those we interact with. And when you're no longer on this earth, you will remain. Not in your synapse-devoid body but in the memory of the people you crossed paths with. It raises the utterly obvious question: How do we want to be remembered?

The second idea, then, is this: Your memories aren't always yours. Memories are often shared and exist in the minds of other people too.

The secret liberation of forgetting

"Diligent as one must be in learning, one must be as diligent in forgetting; otherwise the process is one of pedantry, not culture." - Albert J. Nock

Despite our best efforts, we do forget. Even with other people's help, almost everything will be forgotten in time. And that's okay. Most things aren't worth remembering. Your brain is relentlessly looking for opportunities to habituate memory.

Do you think about the mechanism of pedalling when cycling? Probably not. It just kind of happens. Imagine the utter frustration if you had to consciously recall every single movement. Life would be unbearable, but luckily we have some incredibly advanced hardware and software in our heads.

It's not just procedural memory; our brains stores memories in a way that's difficult for us to perfectly recall. Consider it as storage optimisation. We’ve explored the conscious effort required to remember—effort most people are either unaware of or not inclined to act on.

So, considering this is true for most people reveals a liberating conclusion: People will forget about you and what you did. This is not permission to act as you wish. As Maya Angelou said, "I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel".

Nevertheless, it does give us permission to take more risks. Go ahead, ask the question you’re afraid might make you look stupid—they will forget. Go join that dancing class. You might look silly at first, but they will forget. Start that company. Even if it fails, they will forget.

The last idea comes down to this: Don't worry too much about what people will think of you. They likely aren't thinking about you, and if they are, they will forget.

Final thoughts

When I started writing this I was wary of it becoming a simplistic Memory Improvement 101 type of post. I'm glad it didn't turn out that way. A person can do only so much to remember. Time wins in the end.

Perhaps one day I will write about the dangers of believing in the infallibility of our memory. Confidence in our ability to remember, when we are likely wrong, can be dangerous. For now, I am content to share these thoughts on the untenability of trusting our memory.

I hope you see your memory a little differently after reading this—more fragile than you may have thought. My hope is that you also find comfort in this fragility.

When you find yourself in a storyworthy moment, be there fully. That memory might disappear. Your ability to have had experienced it in that moment won't. Try to capture it, but remember that memories live in those around you too. Remembering becomes a team sport.

And when you're afraid to do that thing, don't worry too much about what others think. They'll forget, as will you.

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Thanks to Mark Troy, Mignon Duminy, and Jan-Hendrik Duminy for reading drafts of this.

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