GUS (Gave Up Smoking) is a community support diary for Kossacks in the midst of quitting smoking. Any supportive comments, suggestions or positive distractions are appreciated. If you are quitting or even just thinking of quitting, please join us! We kindly ask that politics be left out.
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Memory is a tricky thing.
Even those of us with better-than-average recall are subject to the quirks and vagaries of memory...some things looming large while others recede, details shifting, events or actions remembered as much better---or far worse---than they really were. Big chunks of our lives might be cast in shadow, or filtered through rose-colored glasses, our identities shaped by the highs and lows of experience, as we are able to remember and make sense of them.
Our memories (and the personal narrative we weave from them) are one of the few things we can truly call our own. It becomes our truth, but that truth can be fundamentally flawed, or at least skewed enough to only tell part of our story.
Some of that is down to the malleability of memory and experience: we experience something, and create a memory based on that experience, and over time we find ways to categorize those memories and use them to inform our actions.
But the memories themselves aren't always accurate. Over time, the edges blur; details grow fuzzy, or are augmented by the memories of others who may have shared the experiences. We think we remember things exactly the way they happened, but pure objectivity is a rare thing. We dramatize. We idealize. We assume. We borrow bits and pieces from friends and family. We fill in the inevitable gaps with stuff that sounds right, that feels true, but is it, really?
Not always. But in another sense, yes.
For most of us, on some level at least, our past becomes what we need it to be: something to serve our internal narrative and explain our choices and actions.
This can be a good thing, a way to make sense of the more dysfunctional, confusing, or emotionally intense things we experience. We may not have enjoyed living through them (or dealing with them), but we can see how they shaped us and understand the role they played in making us who we are now. And we can sympathize with our younger selves, having to figure out how to process whatever it was, and carry on despite it (or thrive because of what it taught us).
The downside to imperfect memory is that we can make the mistake of basing our actions on an equally imperfect understanding of what we experienced, and use that to excuse our less-than-ideal choices and behaviors. We can romanticize the wrong things, or minimize or forget about stuff that might otherwise help us make better decisions going forward. We remember the upside (even if it was rare or practically nonexistent) and conveniently forget the downside (even if whatever we experienced was mostly downside). We cling to the pleasant anecdote at the expense of the informative cautionary tale.
Memory can be a powerful tool in behavioral change. If we don't learn from our past, we may be doomed to repeat it and never experience the result we need and are working so hard to attain (or maintain). The trick is to figure out which of your memories are helping and which ones are just making things harder for you. Sometimes bouncing them off someone else helps to clarify which is which.
Who's Your Li'l Buddy?
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