Time After Time
Every time I hear the song Time After Time I think of Abby. She was one of my close friends in middle school and one summer we went to Belmar beach and Z100 was DJ-ing at a restaurant where we were getting dinner with her mom. I don't remember how it came about, but we ended up on the radio announcing the song… This is Kristen and Abby from NJ and you're listening to new music from INOJ, Time After Time, on Z100!
It's been 25 years and I still think of her when I hear that song.
This week I watched the movie Zoolander for the first time since high school. Immediately I was back in the room with my friend Karen; half of our senior year was spent quoting that movie. What is this a center for ants?! …Hansel, so hot right now, Hansel. It's so silly, but I can still quote the entire movie.
Ordering a number 6 at Wendy's I still remember my friend Ryan shouting 6 minutes for a number 6?! Or that one time when Ray had to eat the fish so we could go to Fun Spot. Or when I thought I could win at Poker with a pair of Twos until my Uncle Andy - reading my cards through the window to the screened-in porch - told me to fold.
We laughed for days.
I remember these things so clearly, if I didn't know more about memory I would be certain they occurred just as I see them in my mind. While I wouldn’t exactly call them flashbulb memories - moments remembered from significant events like where I was when the planes hit the towers - they are memories that are triggered frequently which means I have revisited them many times since they first occurred. When this happens, research tells us that “as clear and detailed as these memories feel, psychologists find they are surprisingly inaccurate." Due to retrieval reduced distortion, every recall of the memory, every time we hit that replay in our minds, studies show that “the process of memory retrieval can mean that the original memory is rewritten — with the memory of that memory — so that the original memory becomes warped.”
So what’s the point? Why am I talking about memory research on a personal growth blog?
When we get in arguments with people, it is easy to hold very tightly to what we remember happening, but if we understand that maybe our memory is not as accurate as we think it is, it might be a little easier to lift up our heels and meet the other person halfway.
Whenever I enter difficult conversations with people, conversations where I remember everything so clearly and I know I'm right and they are wrong, that is my red flag for myself to take a deep breath and pause. I remind myself that what I remember might not be accurate. Rather than going in with what I believe is surely the true story, I try to go in curious and ask questions: What do they remember? Do their "facts" match up with my "facts"? In the end, do the facts we remember even really matter, or should I be caring more about finding a resolution than being right?
Memory is a powerful thing and it can be used as a weapon to win arguments, or it can be that thing that puts a smile on our face, time after time.
