Do You Remember?

Isn't it ironic that the one thing we build virtually our entire reality around, is in fact, a lie? 


The first time you every tried ice cream, you could not recollect the experience because it did not exist in your mind. So the likelihood that you salivated over the sight of ice cream (if no one was having it in front of you first, at least) is close to zero.

Your experience of how that first ice cream encounter went, in your own mind is very personal. Maybe you liked that it was cold, maybe you didn't. Maybe you liked the sweetness, maybe it did not mean much to you.

Say you turned into an ice cream lover, and say there was a particular ice cream parlour by your childhood home that had a very special raspberry sorbet that you begged for on hot summer days and only got on weekends or if your parents were in the mood to take you. Maybe also on special occasions, birthdays, last day of school and so on.

Every label we put on every experience, object and event is based on the collection of pieces of data that we gathered throughout the years. So your experience of ice cream so far is emotional. Not only do you love ice cream, but that particular raspberry sorbet ice cream is happiness in the form of taste!

The problem with those pieces of data, memories, is that they mostly, inaccurate. Firstly because they pretty much depend on how you see things: your personality, conditioning and experiences. And secondly because every time you remember something, you change it.

Memory works in a way that our recollection of it is modified every time it is recalled. We can make our past feel better, or worse, based on what we do with it when we retrieve it. This is why we can "make peace" with our past, or grow more bitter with time.

So say you had moved out of that childhood home, and missed many weekends of not having your special raspberry ice cream, years even. And every time someone asks you what your favourite flavour is, you mention this very particular cone. Every time you recall this ice cream you will make it better in your head. Which means that it is possible, that when you actually try it years later, you'll feel disappointed. 

And because the mind refuses to make sense of this, because it would be very unsettling to think you no longer have hold on the "truth", you'll find yourself resentfully uttering under your breath "They've changed it".