Memory

I decided to start a blog because I'm venturing to Dublin, Ireland this summer.  I'll be gone for 8 weeks, which each time I think about seems a bit longer than before, to study abroad.  You'll find me in an advertising agency there; which one I couldn't tell you.  I'll find out a lot of things once I get there.


Yesterday was mother's day.  My mom loves talking about memories on holidays when my whole family gets together.  Most of the stories start out with a "remember when..." followed by some add ons, trailed off silence and reminiscent expressions.  Yesterday, my mom's memory took us back to Disney World.  She talked about how incredible it was to watch my sister's and my faces light up as we watched the fireworks and met our favorite characters.  It's funny. I don't remember the trip at all.  A few things come to mind when I think of the trip.  I remember opening the envelope with the tickets on Christmas, and seeing the big epcot ball, but further than that, there's not much.  Granted, I was only about five, but it is pretty amazing that an entire trip happened, more or less right under my nose.


We continued the discussion, talking about memories that were much closer to the present, and still there were some experiences, that no matter how many reminders I had, I couldn't quite trigger in my mind.  


Memory really is a remarkable thing.  We go day to day thinking every little decision we make and every experience that we have is an important one.  When you really think of it, you probably remember about 1 out of every... I don't know, 80 or 90 days that you have in your life.  Kind of makes it seem like memory really isn't all that impressive sometimes.


When asked the question, would you rather have an average experience and remember the whole thing or have an incredible experience and remember nothing, I think I have to pick the average one.  I know people preach living in the moment so much, and I think that's important, but if you can't remember it, it's almost like it never happened at all.  This made me realize how much memory has to do with how you view an experience.  The fact that this hypothetical question mirrors blacking out while drinking has not been lost on me.  A night is only deemed "fun" if you have stories to reminisce about and laugh about in the morning.  If you don't remember anything... you can't really deem it anything at all.  It may have been a great time, but it is somewhat useless.  You didn't gain anything from your experience.  Further than that, are emotions even relevant if you can't remember them at all?  No matter how happy you were at the time, if you can't remember, does it even count?


We learned a lot about memory in my psych class in high school, (although, ironically, I can't quite remember much about it...).  I do remember a few things, though.  One thing that stuck to me, maybe because it was so relevant to high school, was that recall (like fill in the blank tests) is MUCH more challenging for memory than recognition (like multiple choice).


I've been thinking a lot about memory because I'm about to go abroad.  This trip will probably be the only experience even close to its kind that I ever have.  So one thing that I really want to do... is remember it (obviously).  I'm taking my knowledge from my psych class to try and help my memory out as much as I can.  Instead of trying to pull all of my experiences from Dublin out of my head, I'm going to take pictures so that I can use the recognition instead of the recall method.  


Taking pictures abroad? What an incredibly original idea, amIriiight? Well, a lot of this is stemming from my excuse to take more pictures in general, because I've been missing my pathway from my arts school of photography a lot.  College involves a lot of taking pictures of groups of girls smiling with one hand around the girl beside them and the other on their hip.  I really can't help but think that my expensive "fancy" camera is being wasted on pictures like that.  So I'm going to use that baby in Ireland as a tool; a tool to help my memory.


Lots of times I do things because of the way they look to other people.  I act certain ways, I say certain things, I hang around certain people, for the sole purpose of other people's reactions.  Sometimes I really hate that about myself.  I think in a lot of circumstances, people's reactions should be a byproduct of things that you do for yourself.  In the plainest terms, this trip is for me, not my friends on facebook.  I want people to look at my pictures and enjoy them, but there's no way staring at a 3x5 will take them to where I was or allow them to experience what I did.  I shouldn't take the pictures for other people to enjoy, although that might be a byproduct of my unrivaled photography skills (harhar).  I really want my pictures to be a tool for the method of recognition that will allow me to go back to where I was and remember exactly how I felt, so that it really counts.


Maybe this blog can serve that purpose too.


Sophie