Experience vs Memory

Four years ago I read "Being Mortal" by Atul Gawande and I probably wrote a blog about it. My Mom was alive then and we were in the process of trying to solve the "what to do with Mom's living situation" dilemma. Gawande had very salient things to ponder about that situation and I appreciated the book.

This book is one that everyone over the age of 40 or anyone with an aging friend or relative should read. Not that it solves anything but it gives the reader a lot to think about and some solid advice about approaching the end of life. And about approaching life in general, whether the end or the middle.

I just finished listening to the book on CD in my car and it is possibly even more relevant now, even though my Mom is no longer with us. (She died in 2017.) Maybe it's because I have been thinking a lot about getting older and about death and the best way to approach old age and all of that. (Thankfully I am in good health so it is still just speculation, except for the getting old part; that is biting me around the ankles all the time.)

Gawande discusses the "experiencing self" and the "remembering self." It seems, after simply typing those two phrases into Google, that many people have been discussing the same topic. I am finding it not just relevant to myself (and it should be to everyone) but incredibly fascinating on a day-to-day basis.  The experiencing self is our moment by moment life as we experience (aka live) each episode that comes at us: this moment at work, that moment walking the dog, gazing out the window, going to the dentist, everything. We don't consciously think about each experience. Some are good, some bad, some just are there.

The remembering self is the one that guides us, it helps us make decisions, it sorts out the happy moments from those experiences and the unhappy moments and the remembering self is the part of our being that defines our feelings about what we experience.

Here is one good example: you watch a baseball game and it's a great game, your team is ahead, you are delighted in the projected outcome. For 3 hours you are happily watching the game. Then, in the bottom of the 9th inning the opposing team scores ten runs, your team loses the game and those 3 hours of enjoyment are gone. Now you view that game as terrible, nothing about it is enjoyable. You don't remember the joy of the 8+ innings, you only remember the crappy ending. Two hours later you are talking to your baseball buddy and you both agree: what a stupid, fucked up game. The experience of watching the game and enjoying it has been overtaken by the memory.

I saw this a lot with my Mom. She fell many times and at one point was in the hospital for five days and then in a rehab place for a couple of weeks and none of it was pleasant. But what she remembered, what became the truth to her was not the fall or the hospital or the rehab facility. To her it was all about how nice the people in both places were. Nothing about the pain or the terrible food, just a nice fantasy about kind people. 

We all operate this way. The "experience self" should be the self that guides us but because the experiences are so overwhelming (because experience never stops) we rely on what we remember and upon that we are guided. If you have a really terrible medical procedure, like a colonoscopy, you never, ever want to have another one. But if that colonoscopy is painful in the beginning but calm and soothing at the end and the drugs made you happy, having another colonoscopy is nothing to fear because you only remember the end, not the pain. Childbirth is sort of like that as well. We remember the final push and the baby that is placed on our chest; the pain getting to that point is not forgotten but the pain doesn't define the experience.

Why am  I thinking about all this? I am not sure. But it has been following me around for the past week, this experience vs memory conundrum. 

Enough on this for now. However, if you haven't read "Being Mortal" please do. It is a small book but heavy in its meaning.

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