Pranatee Shah Week 14: Can We Trust Our Memories?
It is common for individuals following Hinduism to do puja at home of the deities they worship. This involves lighting a lamp and circling it around pictures or miniature statues of the deities.
One fine day, my dad was doing his typical morning puja and forgot to extinguish the lamp after he was done. Three-year-old Pranatee saw this and decided to take a piece of paper, light it on fire with the puja lamp, and throw it to the ground, essentially creating a bigger fire. My mother, smelling smoke, ran into the kitchen and put it out before much damage was done. I couldn’t help it. At three years old, I was obsessed with fireworks. I loved the colorful patterns they made in the sky. I loved how bright they were, and the way they lit up the night sky.
“Mamma, look at the big firework I made!” I say proudly to my mom, smiling from ear to ear.
Now, consider this.
I have no actual recollection of this happening. My memory does not span as far as the age of three.
Then, how did I just depict such a vivid story? Am I lying? Did this event occur at all?
When I ask my mom to tell me stories of my childhood, she often talks about this one and laughs about how silly of a toddler I was. She has narrated this story so many times and in so much detail that I am able to visualize it in my head. I’ve visualized it so much to a point where this event feels like a genuine memory that I have, indeed, experienced. Now, when I narrate this story to friends and family, I’ll often forget that I don’t truly remember almost lighting the house on fire.
If this is the case for one specific childhood memory, how many other memories of mine are made up? How can I trust my own memories? I do not know.
Your story was hilarious! Reading it brought me joy, especially because it brought back fond memories for me. I also loved playing with fire as a kid! I remember sitting in the backyard with a magnifying glass when I was four, making dead leaves smoke or melting crayon wax. I too caused a lot of trouble for my mom; she had to hide magnifying glasses from me to get me to stop lighting stuff on fire.
ReplyDeleteI generally don’t question whether some memories I have are real or whether I visualized them after hearing my parents describe them. I suppose this may be because my parents don’t generally tell me stories about my childhood; we only talk about them when looking through old photos every so often.
However, there are times when I wonder whether my memories were dreams and products of my imagination. I have a memory of the first time I went skiing, but I can’t recall whether my memory of that experience was from a dream or an actual experience I had. Your idea regarding whether our memories can be fabricated is interesting, and I’d like to see you expand upon it in the future.
Hi Pranatee! Your blog was quite funny, and reminded me a lot of my memories. I definitely did not gain consciousness until around kindergarten, but I have found that many of my dreams have manifested into my reality. I perceive so many of my dreams as realities sometimes, and although this mostly fades in a few seconds after I wake up, some of the normal scenarios integrate themselves into my life. Sometimes I remind my parents of a memory I have, and they don’t remember; If it’s really long ago, sometimes I don’t know if I remembered it wrong or if they just didn’t recall it. Even some memories that my parents tell me, I don’t remember most of them. I enjoyed reading about one of your childhood memories, and I agree that some stories that we don’t remember ourselves, can become core memories. Fake, or fabricated memories might be something that is a true phenomenon and should be studied further; thanks for helping me expand my knowledge on the topic! Good job!
ReplyDeleteHi Pranatee. This story is so relatable to the point at which it makes me question if every small child has the destructive tendency to set their house on fire. Back when I was a really small child, maybe perhaps around your age, I saw oil on the kitchen countertop. And for some reason, my little child brain decided to open the bottle and spread oil all over the kitchen floor. Cut to when poor mom came over and saw what I did. Not only did she have a near heart attack at what could have happened, she had to clean all that by herself. While my story is not as bad as yours, I do find the stupidity and randomness of my actions humorful and fascinating. Like if I was truly a child bent on following the path of destruction, I could have done things far more destructive than spreading oil all over the floor. However, I did something so weird, dangerous, tame, and random that it makes me wonder what was going through my brain at the time. But anyway, I like how you connected your actions to wanting to see fireworks, something my child self sadly lacked the intellectual capacity to desire. Overall, this was a strange, adorable blog.
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ReplyDeleteHi Pranatee, this is such a fascinating and well-written post, and I really enjoyed your anecdote/descriptions. The way you structured your blog, starting out with the description of the memory and then revealing that you actually had no recollection of it, was a really powerful transition! I've definitely experienced this too-- being told a memory so many times that I begin having that memory myself, even if I originally had no recollection of it. It's such an interesting occurence, and I also wonder about how many of our memories might be "made up" or even changed or reshaped based on how other people retell it to us. Memory isn't always an accurate recording of the past, it's something that can be reconstructed through the emotions we attach to them or what we hear/experience. Thanks for sharing!
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