How much of your life do you actually remember?

Munster46

I’m trying to recall my youth and I feel like I’m missing years. Wondering how everyone else’s memory is?

Allinall

Munster46 wrote: »

I’m trying to recall my youth and I feel like I’m missing years. Wondering how everyone else’s memory is?

68%

Beasty

Between 1965 and 1998 around 8%
Between 1998 and 2014 nearer 12%

Since 2014 about 1.8%

Having said that, those percentages are based on the forgotten memory I can still recall...

I find the more you focus on a specific memory through the years, the better you will retain it. Others have just receded into the background, however a song or a taste can trigger one suddenly.

SEPT 23 1989

If you can remember your youth you weren't there

gozunda

I can remember feeling quite annoyed at baby talk directed at me whilst in my cot - thereafter its full glorious technicolor with surround sound ...

ytpe2r5bxkn0c1

In effect, it's reckoned we remember less than 1% of our lives. Pick a year at random, say 2007, can you recall one event for each day of that year? Highly unlikely. We'll remember major events and may recall specific items for some noteworthy reason but most vanishes.

yourdeadwright

98% of Humans have crap memory
I
n nearly all case your memories of your youth are in fact you remembering remembering something , its a proven thing ,

Your details are not what actually happened but you remembering the story of what happened that you have played over in your head,

Uncharted

Bout three fiddy

D3V!L

Quite a lot of it, I'm haunted by past memories good and bad.

Steve F

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpTCZ-hO6iI

Sabre0001

The mortifying bits...

Apiarist

I would say probably a few days in total. To remember stuff, I suppose you need some memory anchors, like a diary or a photo album with notes. I remember nothing before 4 years old, and only some (20?) scenes between 4 and 12. A bit more from my teenage years.

Dalomanakora

Not a lot tbh!

Childhood, I remember plenty. 16-25, I remember very little. I was mentally unwell with trauma and other issues and I've basically blacked a large portion out.


25-now, I remember everything fairly well.

CelticRambler

Every so often myself and my three siblings end up discussing some event that happened in our collective past. There are usually four different versions of the same memory! :rolleyes: Often enough, though, one or other of us will have absolutely no recollection of whatever it was, even if we were there. Sometimes the one who does remember has the photos, so it's debatable as to how much is real memory, and how much is remembering what's in the photo.

Franz Von Peppercorn

It’s very odd to not remember being in a photo I think, though it has happened to me. Particularly one you actually posed for. And were sober for.

It’s proof that you did something that totally disappeared from memory.

(As an adult or teenager I mean).

AllForIt

CelticRambler wrote: »

Every so often myself and my three siblings end up discussing some event that happened in our collective past. There are usually four different versions of the same memory! :rolleyes: Often enough, though, one or other of us will have absolutely no recollection of whatever it was, even if we were there. Sometimes the one who does remember has the photos, so it's debatable as to how much is real memory, and how much is remembering what's in the photo.

Memory becomes corrupted over time. Like my SD card.

c.p.w.g.w

Can remember winning with champions league with Anderlecht in football manager and my starting 11.

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Marcos

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L.Sartor--Cris--G.De Boecke--O.Deschacht

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W.Basseggio

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Gilberto-Silva

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A.Stocia

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Z.Zahovic

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B.Goor

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A.Gerk

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Won the final on valentine's day with a broken leg

gozunda

Ansley Disgusting Switch-hitter wrote: »

In effect, it's reckoned we remember less than 1% of our lives. Pick a year at random, say 2007, can you recall one event for each day of that year? Highly unlikely. We'll remember major events and may recall specific items for some noteworthy reason but most vanishes.

I must be somewhat of an outlier having committed listened to conversations to memory from a fairly young age ... :pac:

I reckon I could embarrass several people even to this day...

erica74

Ansley Disgusting Switch-hitter wrote: »

In effect, it's reckoned we remember less than 1% of our lives. Pick a year at random, say 2007, can you recall one event for each day of that year? Highly unlikely. We'll remember major events and may recall specific items for some noteworthy reason but most vanishes.

Definitely not!

I take a lot of photos and a lot of videos to help with memories when I'm an old lady in my rocking chair. I have a few hard drives full of photos and videos and I plug them in every now and then and have a scroll through and see what story I can put with each photo or video. It's funny how quickly you forget things though. For example, one of our dogs is a rescue german shepherd, and right now, she's very old, she's deaf, she's overweight, it takes a while to wake her up, she's very stiff when getting up and much slower on her feet. She's around 10ish and we've had her for 6 years. When we look at her now, we can't remember a time when she wasn't old but recently, I plugged a hard drive into my laptop and found videos of her, when she first came to live with us, running around, rolling around, playing with our other dogs, it felt strange to have forgotten that so quickly.

Wanderer78

Add rocks, how in the hell do I even remember my name

Graces7

Far, far too much in vivid dreadful detail.

Actually most of it and it goes back nearly 80 years now. I have the memory most elephants would envy.

It varies from person to person and I think depending on the life you lead. The fuller the life, the less capacity for detailled memories? I have lived mostly in solitude

CelticRambler

erica74 wrote: »

For example, one of our dogs is a rescue german shepherd, and right now, she's very old, she's deaf, she's overweight, it takes a while to wake her up, she's very stiff when getting up and much slower on her feet. She's around 10ish and we've had her for 6 years. When we look at her now, we can't remember a time when she wasn't old but recently, I plugged a hard drive into my laptop and found videos of her, when she first came to live with us, running around, rolling around, playing with our other dogs, it felt strange to have forgotten that so quickly.

Kind of like my mother! I have a photograph of her perched half way up the wall of a ruined castle (she was the only one in the family who felt it needed to be climbed ) Hard to reconcile that image of a slim, agile young woman with the Mammy who force-feeds me extra potatoes when I go to visit, but I took the picture, so it was definitely her!

Mrcaramelchoc

Thank God I'm not alone.my memory is ****e.certain bits and pieces along the way.photos help me remember other things but overall its very patchy.
Id love to be able to remember more.

mackeire

Up until the age of around 16/17, I remembered pretty much everything.
From then on is a bit of a blur, probably due to alcohol.

Frank O. Pinion

Remember, when you remember a memory, you not actually remembering the memory, but only the memory of the last time you remembered the memory. So, it's not a true 1:1 memory, plus your brain distorts memories every time you remember them.

Graces7

Frank O. Pinion wrote: »

Remember, :eek:when you remember a memory, you not actually remembering the memory, but only the memory of the last time you remembered the memory. So, it's not a true 1:1 memory, plus your brain distorts memories every time you remember them.

may be so for you. not for others. we live with our past firm inside us which is what memory is. we are shaped and informed and taught by it. precious and painful

Franz Von Peppercorn

Frank O. Pinion wrote: »

Remember, when you remember a memory, you not actually remembering the memory, but only the memory of the last time you remembered the memory. So, it's not a true 1:1 memory, plus your brain distorts memories every time you remember them.

I’ve heard that but it doesn’t make sense that the brain would work like that. Not all the time anyway.

With memory I think we are really talking about recall. A lot is stored in the brain but hard to access. Although you probably couldn’t remember the plot of a movie you watched in 2007 scene by scene if asked about it now, while watching it you often start to remember the different scenes.

ouxbbkqtswdfaw

I used to blame alcohol for the lack of memory over the years, but I am glad to see it is a more general phenomenon.

What I can't understand is how I can remember the room I was in for sixth year when I sat, the school in vivid detail, yet I can't remember whole decades I have a very happy life for the most part so it nothing to do with not wanting to remember it must be something about how our brains work.

shivermetimber

Almost nothing from childhood and early teens. Very, very little of early and mid 20's (now mid 30's). If I do remember something it is moreso fact then memory and there is no real emotional / personal attachment. I can never do the 'remember when ... ' thing with people as I simply don't most of the time. Pretty sure I have some form of SDAM (severely deficient autobiographical memory).

Cina

Not much.

Generally I remember the good more than the bad, funnily enough.

My ex was a total wagon of a person who basically tormented me for almost three years and yet most of what I remember or what comes to my mind first when thinking about her, are the good times we had together even though they were probably far fewer in between than the bad things. Which is really annoying because my missus now is a much better person than her in every way, but hey, can't escape the past some times.

I think that logic probably applies to most things in life, too. You tend to remember the good, not the bad. So when something bad happens, don't worry, you'll probably forget about it anyway, you old fart.

ELM327

yourdeadwright wrote: »

98% of Humans have crap memory
I
n nearly all case your memories of your youth are in fact you remembering remembering something , its a proven thing ,

Your details are not what actually happened but you remembering the story of what happened that you have played over in your head,

I'm not reading this post but I'm reading my reading of it. Is that it. I'm smrt.

razorblunt

Probably not as much as I think.
If you said 1996 I could work out a few things like where we went on holiday, what class I was in school, which would probably rekindle a lot more memories especially if looking at a photo.

Recently though I encountered a smell, that brought me back to a time and place when I was kid, like in that movie Ratatouille and a ton of memories came flooding back.

No sooner had the warm liquid mixed with the crumbs touched my palate than a shudder ran through me and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary thing that was happening to me. An exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses, something isolated, detached, with no suggestion of its origin. And at once the vicissitudes of life had become indifferent to me, its disasters innocuous, its brevity illusory – this new sensation having had on me the effect which love has of filling me with a precious essence; or rather this essence was not in me it was me. ... Whence did it come? What did it mean? How could I seize and apprehend it? ... And suddenly the memory revealed itself. The taste was that of the little piece of madeleine which on Sunday mornings at Combray (because on those mornings I did not go out before mass), when I went to say good morning to her in her bedroom, my aunt Léonie used to give me, dipping it first in her own cup of tea or tisane. The sight of the little madeleine had recalled nothing to my mind before I tasted it. And all from my cup of tea.”

Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time

Franz Von Peppercorn

It’s fairly well documented that smells or tastes can bring memories back. (Obviously the tastes or smells can’t be that common).

farmchoice

when anyone talks of memory a line pops into my head ''i remember i remember the house where i was born''. in one of his war memoirs spike milligan quotes it, his family moved around a lot when he was a kid and he says the line always stuck with him because he lacked that permanence.


now there is a funny thing to remember, anyway this thread prompted me to look up the poem for the fist time ever despite that fact that i probably quote that one line in my head nearly every day, and its 25 years since i read the book.



its from a poem called i remember i remember by a pote called thomas hood.


I remember, I remember,

The house where I was born,

The little window where the sun

Came peeping in at morn;

He never came a wink too soon,

Nor brought too long a day,

But now, I often wish the night

Had borne my breath away!



I remember, I remember,

The roses, red and white,

The vi'lets, and the lily-cups,

Those flowers made of light!

The lilacs where the robin built,

And where my brother set

The laburnum on his birthday,—

The tree is living yet!



I remember, I remember,

Where I was used to swing,

And thought the air must rush as fresh

To swallows on the wing;

My spirit flew in feathers then,

That is so heavy now,

And summer pools could hardly cool

The fever on my brow!



I remember, I remember,

The fir trees dark and high;

I used to think their slender tops

Were close against the sky:

It was a childish ignorance,

But now 'tis little joy

To know I'm farther off from heav'n

Than when I was a boy.

wakka12

Ansley Disgusting Switch-hitter wrote: »

In effect, it's reckoned we remember less than 1% of our lives. Pick a year at random, say 2007, can you recall one event for each day of that year? Highly unlikely. We'll remember major events and may recall specific items for some noteworthy reason but most vanishes.

Well you might only remember 1% of your life if asked in such a vague way as what do you remember about some random year

But you probably would remember significantly more if asked more specific questions which triggered memories..like you mightnt remember the movies you went to see in the year 2007 if somebody asked to list them but if somebody brought up a random movie in conversation that you had happened to have seen during 2007 youll probably remember lots of things about it for instance, you mightnt remember certain parties or having met certain old friends during 2007 if asked, but if asked specifically did you enjyo marys 50th or johns 21st back in 2007 youll probably remember lots of specific things about those individial events too even if you arent always thinking about them off the top of your head and they werent defining moments in your life that would summarise certain yearsor parts of your life

So if you were asked lots of specific memory triggering questions about your life Id say we could all remember huge amoounts of our adult life

andekwarhola

One thing I find interesting is that on more than one occasion, I've been discussing my youth with friends and they often remember things of which I have zero recollection and vice versa.

One of the incidents I was told about, for example, was a fist fight on the street with another (bully) kid that I had when I was around 10 or 11 that I couldn't recall at all and I always assumed you'd remember dramatic things like that as I remember far more mundate things from the same period.

Just find it interesting that in an almost random way, we all seem to prioritize different things in memory.

One thing I'm always dubious about though, is people claiming to remember extremely early memories. I think sometimes it could be selective, based on anecdotes or other stuff, and curated over time.

Graces7

andekwarhola wrote: »

One thing I find interesting is that on more than one occasion, I've been discussing my youth with friends and they often remember things of which I have zero recollection and vice versa.

One of the incidents I was told about, for example, was a fist fight on the street with another (bully) kid that I had when I was around 10 or 11 that I couldn't recall at all and I always assumed you'd remember dramatic things like that as I remember far more mundate things from the same period.

Just find it interesting that in an almost random way, we all seem to prioritize different things in memory.

One thing I'm always dubious about though, is people claiming to remember extremely early memories. I think sometimes it could be selective, based on anecdotes or other stuff, and curated over time.

Depends what you mean by early? I have many very clear early ,memories, 2 and under that were in the house we left when I was 3. Not anecdotal as family fragmented.

BeerWolf

I remember my toddler days, 34 currently.

Cleopatra_

I remember too much.

The Oort Cloud

Munster46 wrote: »

I’m trying to recall my youth and I feel like I’m missing years. Wondering how everyone else’s memory is?

You're not alone. I feel like the last 16 years was speed-ed up some way from a different time perspective/dimension in some weird way. I noticed a long time ago of a change in time, like some spectral anomaly interfered with natural space-time moving it forward much faster.



As weird and strange as this sounds, that's what it feels like.