How much of your life do you actually remember?

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.

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

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.

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.

I remember my toddler days, 34 currently.

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.