Memories

It has long bothered me that I am able to recall (hopefully with some degree of accuracy) events that happened 50 years ago but have difficulty in remembering much about later events. Specifically, I am referring to the various blogs that I have written about my teenage, pre-emigration, years (1970-8), as opposed to many of my adult years (e.g. 1982-1989). I've always assumed that this was because many of my 'British' memories came from specific individual events, whereas my 'Israeli' memories came from the years that I was working full-time, where one day was very much like the next.

I am currently reading a book entitled 'The body keeps the score' by Bessel van der Kolk M.D. Roughly speaking, the thesis of the book is that a child's early environment, specifically how well she is loved and treated by her parents in her formative years, will determine her emotional outlook later on in life. A 'good' environment will lead to a balanced personality, whereas a 'bad' environment is liable to lead to a personality that 'shuts down' when faced with adversity.

I want to share a paragraph that comes from chapter 11, 'normal versus traumatic memory': Whether we remember a particular event at all, and how accurate our memories of it are, largely depends on how personally meaningful it was and how emotional we felt about it at the time. The key factor is our level of arousal. We all have memories associated with particular people, songs, smells, and places that stay with us for a long time.... We remember insults and injuries best: The adrenaline that we secrete to defend against potential threats helps to engrave those incidents into our minds. Even if the content of the remark fades, our dislike for the person who made it usually persists. 

I don't seem to remember insults and injuries best; to be honest, I barely remember most of the insults although there are a few mental injuries that I remember only too well (and I've documented them here).

---

This day in history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
809	12/02/2015	Frankie	TV series, William and Mary
1470	12/02/2022	You hold me (yet another new song)	TV series, Song writing, Home recording