Let’s Accept Our Memory Is Unreliable

Doing the best with our time without idealising the past

a woman ponders in an ethereal plain with blurry islands dotted around her in the distance, minimal modern digital art — by DALL·E

We constantly witness proof that our memory is insultingly unreliable. Frequently, whenever two friends recall a moment they shared, the scene appears to be exceedingly different depending on who describes it. I pride myself on having a decent memory and often remember things my friends have long forgotten. Yet, I have lost count of the times I have realised my recollection was incorrect, or at least not entirely accurate. Indeed, having a prodigious memory can be a curse sometimes, as we or even others come to depend on it.

We constantly abuse the unreliability of the mind’s capacity to remember precisely. Business owners use convenient portions of the data available to them, knowing it is unlikely anybody will be able to remember and notice any inconsistencies. Politicians make a living out of voters’ tragically flimsy memories. Even relationships can be sustained on the involved parties’ ability to forget specific events.

This is why we should question any ideal scenario that lives in our minds as something that happened. The brain will tell us otherwise, but nothing used to be perfect. When we say we miss home or a job or a relationship, we only yearn for certain aspects of a point in time. We don’t miss an entire period or way of…