Making Memories

We think our memories tell us who we are. What if they don't?

The auditorium was full. Teenagers mainly, but a smattering of adults too. Three days of competition had come to an end and only one task remained - the awarding of the debate trophy. The coaches of the two teams who had made it to the final stepped on to the stage carrying the cup. A hush fell over the audience. One of the coaches stepped forward, tapped the mic and said, “As losers, we give the cup to Campion.” Mass applause.

And confusion. For ironically in a competition dedicated to clear communication, it wasn’t entirely clear who had won - was it the coach’s team who were the losers or was it Campion? It certainly wasn’t obvious to one member of that school’s team. Stumbling down to the stage in confusion and slight incomprehension (“there’s no way we lost that”), eventually his coach took to the mic to clarify that his team had actually won.

But which team member was it? For when the two discussed the event years later, both remembered being the confused one. Did, as one remembered it, the other explain the situation to him, or had his teammate been just as confused as he?

There was no way of resolving the matter. No way of finding out what had actually happened. Just one event, and two subtly different accounts.

At the time of the debate, both would have been able to agree on what was happening. But as the years passed, one, or the other, or both, had started to tell themselves a story which subtly diverged from what had actually happened. Neither, though, could tell when this took place. To them, they had always remembered it that way. Because the event had happened that way.

It doesn’t matter which one is wrong, nor does it particularly matter what actually happened. The point is that somewhere along the line, at least one of them had started to “remember” something that had not taken place.

We like to think of our memories as recordings, faithful records of what transpired, stored in an archive, ready to be retrieved when needed. We might call this the “home movie” theory of memory. But rather than corralling an unwilling family to watch the dusty tapes of holidays gone by, we run the movie through an editing suite before we show it. Bits get cut out. Special effects are added to keep the audience entertained. And then, viewing over, the new “director’s cut” is put back on the shelf.

The problem is that we cannot know what we remember until we remember it. And the act of remembering itself subtly alters what we remember.

Recollections, it was famously said, may vary. We learn from an early age that others may not remember what we do - a promised trip to the park may be the highlight of a child’s week, and a stressed parent’s bargaining chip to get out of the house. We know that people may remember things differently to us - the film Rashomon tells the same story from four different vantage points.

But generally, unless we have evidence to the contrary, we believe our version is right. It is generally other people who misremember. But if two people are editing their memories and disagree, it is not just possible that one is wrong, but also that neither is right. Both might be subtly moving away from the truth of the event.

When disputes occur between people, we have ways of resolving them. One can try to persuade the other that their version is the correct one. They can adduce evidence, appeal to other events - “Of course you said that. Don’t you remember he said this back to you?”, “Oh, yes. Now I think about it, you’re right”.

But when our memories aren’t shared, we have no means of error correction. My debate with my debate partner raised doubts about how I remembered the final. Had the memory just popped back during an idle day-dream or had I been recounting the event to someone who wasn’t there, I would have given my version of the story without hesitation. It was, after all, what had happened. As far as I knew.

But one or other or both of us is misremembering what happened. Therefore, one or other or both of us is telling themselves a story about themselves which isn’t true. The event they claim happened didn’t happen the way they thought so they are not quite who they thought they were.

For our memories are who we are and how we know who we are. They are the autobiography we continually write (and nobody ever reads). If they are mistaken, our tome should be moved on to the fiction shelves. A story, not a work of journalistic rigour. The Adventures of Someone Who Doesn’t Quite Exist.

It couldn’t be any other way. The brain works the way the brain works. It evolved to make sense of the world. And to make sense of itself. Coherence is king. And comfort is queen - a satisfying narrative about ourselves being what we all crave. But a statement which coheres with what we know is not necessarily a statement which corresponds to the truth.

The two coincide sufficiently frequently that we come to believe they are the same but in reality, they are separate tracks, sometimes overlapping, sometimes diverging. But we can never be entirely sure just how they relate to each other. Our memories tell us a story. We do not know how much they tell us about ourselves.

Or rather, our memories tell us stories. For if they change as we recall them, so too must the tale they tell. Not a classic novel faithfully reprinted word for word, but a superhero franchise, constantly retconned to meet the needs of the latest film; events which were canon yesterday being altered today.

I know how “I” reacted after the debate, I just don’t know how I reacted.