Memory and imagination
Tonight en route to Toronto I heard the CBC Radio program Ideas air an interview with Endel Tulving about the science of memory. Fascinating. The gist is that long-term memory has traditionally been lumped together, but he distinguishes episodic memory, which involves memories of past events and experiences, from semantic memory, which is everything we know about the world. Episodic memory is where most people derive their identity. But people can know a lot of things without access to episodic memory. In fact people with complete amnesia due to brain damage may not know how they arrived in the room while still knowing facts like the capital of France or the chemical formula for salt.
He also suggested that the way our brains access episodic memories is remarkably similar to the way we exercise imagination. In fact it's hard to distinguish how we remember past events from how we imagine future ones. Which brings us back to the question: what is time? We have no sense organ for perceiving it the way we can perceive space by sight, touch or sound.
I have poor episodic memory. Often when talking to school friends it hits me how poorly I remember past events. This can be a problem living alone, because it's easy to forget recent experiences of feeling connected. I know (semantically) I have friends, but I forget episodically. My imagination stretches momentary loneliness into the past and future.
Somehow in the midst of this radio program I was struck with the intense complexity and beauty of life.
I mistrust the practice of applying gratitude to improve one's state of mind. I'm not saying I'm against it, it just feels unnatural to me, and sometimes ignores part of the truth. But beauty is something I value and can always hold onto. I wonder whether I would feel better if I made a daily practice of focusing on something beautiful.