The Stories We Tell
At the memory care community I work in, we have something called the Daily Chronicles that we read to residents every morning. It functions as a newspaper, but rather than reporting current events it covers various topics relating to humanity, nature, and the events that took place on that day in history. Some days, the residents and I struggle to find any real connection to their lives or memories in these articles. But on other days, the articles prompt a meaningful discussion that residents can intimately relate to. Yesterday was one such day.
The title of the inciting article was “Only Human”- a recurring segment that typically covers some shortcoming of human nature. Yesterday’s Only Human covered the way that our brains process memory. We learned that the brain is not hardwired to remember exact details, and therefore when we recall an event in our life, we don’t remember it as it really happened- we remember it as we last recalled it. Beyond that, we have a tendency to slightly adjust details of a story each time we tell it, to the point where the story has completely changed years beyond its initial telling. We don’t do this willfully- we truly believe that our last telling of the story is the objective reality of what happened.
But more often than not (almost always, in fact)- it isn’t.
The importance of this particular article for the residents was two-fold:
I could see a tangible positive shift in their demeanor when the topic of memory was breached. It was almost like a sigh of relief was released across the room. “Oh, this happens to everyone? It’s okay that I don’t remember everything exactly as it was” seemed to be the attitude shift.
It highlighted the importance in framing the story of your life positively.
If our brains are trained to remember the last way we retold an event, then we should be sure to frame that event in a positive light. Perhaps that could be the key to unlocking more positive memories in old age. Or- my personal hypothesis: perhaps this is a contributing factor to why older adults’ memories are more likely to carry an emotionally positive tone. Older adults have had more opportunities to retell stories with slight positive adjustments each time around.
Illustration by Kieran Blakey
The bottom line is that we have more control over our memories than we might think. The stories we tell about our lives are more important to our emotional well being than the actual events that took place. When I was discussing this with the residents, some of them shared stories that they have retold throughout their lives. They were fascinated that the story they remembered might not be what had happened at all, and one of them mentioned that it was freeing to know that she “didn’t have to get it right because “nobody gets it 100% right!”
You may have heard the saying that “life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you respond to it.” I would agree, but I would also submit that a good percentage of life equates to how we remember certain events. Life can only be as good as the story you tell. Is your story told with bitterness and defeat- or is it told with triumph and lessons learned? Be conscientious of the way you frame it, because the way you frame it is the way it will solidify in your memory.
A great example of this idea can be found in Tim O’Brien’s book “The Things They Carried”. It is a collection of semi-autobiographical stories derived from his experiences in the Vietnam War. When you read this book, you realize that some of these stories seem outlandish- almost borderline fantasy. This is because O’Brien is telling the story of the Vietnam War in a way that is more palatable to his memory- he can’t bear to relive what truly happened to him in the war, so he adjusts the stories just enough so that he can put the details on a page without crumbling. For example, in retelling a story of death, he uses innocent animals rather than people. While the Vietnam War is an extreme example, I really believe that we can use this tactic in retelling all kinds of stories of tragedy in our lives.
I want to close with a quote that I think encapsulates the essence of our power over memory:
“We tell ourselves stories in order to live...we live entirely by the imposition of a narrative line upon disparate images, by the ‘ideas’ which we have learned to freeze the shifting phantasmagoria which is our actual experience.”
-Joan Didion, famous author
Tell yourselves a good story, and you will remember a good life!
