The Impersistence of Memory

In the column above mine in The Daily News this morning Scot DeSmit wrote about his faulty recollection of characters from a book he read to his children. He remembered a rabbit and a gopher rather than a squirrel and a mole. His column reminded me of the many times I have misrecollected things and events from my past. I have remembered houses being somewhere else, people looking and acting different and events not being quite the same as others recollect them. In studying memory, I learned that there are biological traces of every memory we have. Our minds also seem to have a pastime of creating scenarios different from the ones which actually happened. Maybe there is a novelist inside each of us happily going about creating new events from the material provided by reality. It certainly makes for an interesting world.

Schedules and Accomplishments

For much of my life I have not liked schedules. I liked to do things when I felt like it but as a psychologist my life ran by appointment. Now that I am spending most of my time writing, I have much more flexibility. Still, I have discovered that I can't be successful doing as I please whenever I please. At one time, I could only exercise in the morning. If it didn't happen then, I didn't get to it no matter what my intentions. I would write later in the day and that worked for a while. Recently I found that I felt an urge to write early in the morning and had to exercise some other time. It surprised me to find that mid day turned out to be a better time for me to exercise, at least at this point in my life. My body and mind seeem to have their own schedules which change from time to time. Rather than trying to impose my will on them, I have found that I am much more productive when I follow their lead rather than trying to dominate them.

Slow Motion

Last week I felt like my mind was operating in slow motion. Fortunately it recovered. This week I am wrestling with a cold and my body feels like it is now in slow motion. While not actually plodding through molasses, it sure feels like it. Maybe it takes weeks like this to appreciate my body and mind and how well they usually work in tandem so I can accomplish what I want to. I apologize to my body and mind for taking them both for granted. I know I don't operate on automatic pilot, but when things go smoothly, it seems to be an occupational hazard of living to ignore what is going on behind the scenes. The drama of our lives is not a simple one and consists of much more than is obvious, even to ourselves.