Why can a single melody from years ago unlock a long-buried memory, while a life-altering trauma can disappear without a trace? These puzzles lie at the heart of one of the mind’s greatest mysteries: memory.
I notice that working and living at Jewish Senior Life, memory becomes more than just a personal experience; it becomes a communal project. Stories echo through shared meals, card games and hallway conversations, connecting us across decades. We carry each other’s memories as well as our own. One person’s recollection of a song, a childhood game, or a holiday tradition can awaken something in another. These moments remind us that memory, while deeply individual, is also a shared human thread, woven daily among neighbors who become like family. People who reach out to each other to share their memories find friends.
I immerse myself in in research about memory these days. I like to challenge myself with puzzles and mind games to strengthen ways I can hold lists of items in my mind. As they say, use it or lose it! Memory isn’t a recorder. It’s a storyteller. Unlike a video camera that passively records events, memory is selective, emotional, and often unreliable. What we remember and what we forget can tell us more about how our minds work than the memories themselves.
We’re wired to remember the meaningful moments. Emotionally charged experiences of joy, terror, grief, and love leave deeper imprints in our brain. Neuroscientists call these “flashbulb memories,” vivid recollections burned into our minds by intensity. Our first kiss, the moment a loved one passed, a humiliating public misstep, these become bookmarks in our narrative of who we are. Our brains don’t bother to keep every detail. They filter memories based on relevance, novelty, and emotional weight. We’re built to thrive, not to catalog.
Psychologists refer to this as motivated forgetting, a blend of conscious and unconscious decisions to forget. Sometimes, we discard recollections because they’re trivial. At other times, especially in the case of trauma or grief, forgetting becomes a form of self-protection. When overwhelmed, the brain shields us by quieting memories too painful to carry.
And then I contemplate cognitive decline and the fear of forgetting. Perhaps nothing underscores the fragility of memory more than Alzheimer’s disease. It slowly unthreads the very fabric of identity, erasing names, faces, and moments that once gave life meaning. For those living with it and their loved ones, it’s not just memory that fades, but connection. A shared joke, a familiar song, even the recognition in a parent’s eyes can vanish, leaving behind a painful silence. Dementia is a heartbreaking reminder that memory is not guaranteed, and its loss can feel like losing someone twice.
These are the thoughts that surface if I forget someone’s name. At our age, it happens whether we like it or not. We fear losing ourselves to cognitive decline. Yet with this fear, there is also gratitude and appreciation for the memories we can still recall.
In my research I’ve learned that memory is rewritten, not retrieved. Each time we recall a memory, we don’t retrieve a fixed image, we rewrite it. According to renowned psychologist Dr. Elizabeth Loftus, memory is strikingly malleable. Her studies show how suggestion and external influence can distort memories and even implant false ones. On her podcast with the American Psychological Association, Loftus discusses how eyewitness testimony, often considered reliable, is surprisingly vulnerable to distortion.
This reconstructive nature reveals that memory is shaped not just by what happened, but also by how we interpret it. Our memories are edited, colored by current emotions, beliefs, or the story we’re telling ourselves about who we are.
Certain memories become anchors. They define our identity and how we stitch together our life story. Think of the birth of a child, a public failure, or the moment you discover your passion. These memories aren’t just stored, they’re cherished, rehearsed and curated.
And often they are rewritten. We often build a “narrative self” using selected memories, picking and choosing events that support how we see ourselves or who we wish to become. Memory isn’t just about the past; it shapes our present and our future.
Forgetting is a function of protection. We forget far more than we remember. The mind filters out the mundane, like daily routines or less significant events, and sometimes suppresses pain. Freud called this repression. Today, we understand that forgetting can be a necessary coping tool. Painful memories may recede, not because they’re unimportant but because they’re troubling or overwhelming. And in an age of constant information, forgetting is not only normal, but it can also be essential.
Ultimately, memory is a mosaic that is living, shifting, and incomplete. Its utility lies not in accuracy, but in what can tell us about our present selves. We may never fully understand why some memories haunt us while others vanish and others are rewritten. But in that mystery, we find something profoundly human…our capacity to feel, to protect ourselves, and to shape our lives through our ongoing stories. What we remember and what we choose to forget provides not just a glimpse into the workings of our brain, but a window into our soul.
The evening of Sunday, June 1 through Tuesday, June 3, we celebrate the holiday of Shavuot, which commemorates the giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai. This holiday is deeply tied to memory and remembrance. It’s not just about remembering a historical event, but about actively engaging with that memory to make it relevant to the present. Shavuot encourages us to learn from the past, blend it into our present lives, and find meaning and purpose in our connection to our heritage.
SHABBAT SHALOM.
