Category Archives: memory

In Autumn, the Truth is Revealed

In autumn, the truth comes out.

And by autumn, I mean any autumn. Autumn the meteorological season before winter; Autumn on the calendar; Autumn in our life span; and Autumn in the liturgical year.

In every case, if you step back far enough, you can see the patterns. The photo op brilliant foliage reveals what was there all along, shaped by experience.  In spite of the sometimes-brutal clarity of autumn, I love this time of year.

Deciduous trees that turn yellow, gold and orange in autumn are not so much changing color as revealing the color that has been resting underneath, hiding under the green of chlorophyll. As the days grow shorter and cooler, chlorophyll production decreases. The leaves have always been golden. The trees have experiences, and these matter, too. Perhaps there has been plenty of rain and the soil is rich, or perhaps a hurricane has blown off so many small branches that the tree suffers malnutrition from a lack of chlorophyll. Then, too, if it is the sort of tree that turns red, its intensity will be impacted by sugars manufactured and stored; more sweetness makes for a more brilliant red.

In October or November, looking back at the resolutions, motto, word or intentions for the new year, the truth is revealed. In March one might kick that can down the road; even in June there is still “plenty of time.” But in autumn, reality comes to visit. We either did, or did not, step up and out into the life we intended to try to make. The combination of who we are (like it or not) and the experiences thrown at us by life bring the outcome we assess in the autumnal review of our intentions for the year. I’ve had the same motto for years now because apparently I’m a slow learner.

In the mirror, in the season of life poets call autumn, we see the person we have been all along, plus our experiences. The smoothness and sameness of youth is gone for those in midlife and later; laughter and tears, pain and care, habits – good and bad – all are revealed. A twenty-five-year-old might hide bad habits, but by forty-five, the entire body shows the pattern and at sixty-five, odds are the mind and spirit are far from what they promised to become before a bad habit became an addiction. On the other hand, there can be an explosion of energy, creativity and spiritual growth at in the autumn of life that startles those who mistook the responsible behaviors of younger years for that person being “boring.” This is when adult children wonder if their parents have gone a bit crazy – taking up new hobbies, traveling, refusing to be properly “old.” No, they were never actually boring, just busy with lifegiving, the drive that Erikson called “generativity,” that leads people to make sacrifices for others, and trees to manufacture food out of sunlight to nourish themselves and the seeds for future trees.

And then the liturgical year winds around, ending about four weeks before Christmas, with the Scripture readings for the last few weeks focused more and more on the last things – our own death, the final judgment, the need to take account of how we are living and make changes in accord with the highest good.  How appropriate that this unveiling of the reality beneath happens in such a pervasive way – that we are offered the chance see ourselves, our year, our years in total, through the same golden lens.

Happy mid-autumn; wishing you all the golden light the season offers.

That’s Confabulous!

That’s Confabulous!

Your favorite uncle entertains every family gathering with the same stories.
His listeners realize they are not the same stories. The tales shift…small flourishes are added, details are lost and later denied (“Uncle, what about the cow? You mentioned the cow in the marsh last time.” “No, no – there wasn’t a cow. It was a goat. It’s always been a goat. Why would there be a cow in the marsh?”) Emotions intensify, diminish, and intensify again; the who, when and even the where are wobbly.
Is your uncle a pathological liar?
Well, he might be.
More likely, he’s a normal human being.
Memory is not a video recorder from an omniscient position. Our memories are constructed. Because it’s imperfect – and our brains want things to make sense – we fill in the blanks. There’s a little of filling-in-the-blanks in almost every memory, and in extreme cases, it is called confabulation.
Karl Bonhoeffer, German psychiatrist and father of martyred pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer, coined the term. Confabulation, properly used, is the unconscious attempt to fill in the blanks in memory with made-up details, identified most with alcohol-related forms of dementia. The speaker believes it’s all true – but it’s not. Brain damage causes inevitable errors in processing and storing memories, and the brain valiantly attempts to weave a story out of scraps.
Related to confabulation is the tendency to “fill in the blanks” where there is no dementia and no logical reason to do so. People make up stories about other people, ruminate on them, discuss them with their companions. Later, when the subject comes up, the remembered imaginings are woven into whatever sparse facts were originally available. Electronic media has speeded up a process that used to require substantially more time and effort. The possibility of interrupting the downward spiral is much diminished.
A nearly harmless example: last year I moved my office from the high rise where I’d been for 19 years to two parish-based offices. My old office furniture was not needed in either location, so I gave it away to my parish, where it is apparently very popular with the youth group at their Sunday night meetings. Imagine my surprise when I heard from various sources that I had closed my practice, semi-retired, stopped working…you see the drift. People took one fact (she gave away her old couches and tables) and built a story around it (she retired). I have no idea how many referrals have not come my way due to someone’s – or several someones’ – confabulous storytelling regarding my work.
Less benign are the tendencies of unhappy people to ruminate and stir in speculations, scraps of other unhappy memories, fears and grudges, creating a new and often sinister narrative about a situation or people. This seems to be most effective when done in dyads or slightly larger groups. My observation, at least, is that the more shared memories, the more believable the confabulous concoction of “truth” that emerges from the co-rumination. Motivations are attributed with no evidence; “facts” are mutually invented and, since someone else believes or remembers the same exact thing – why, clearly, it must be true.
If this has ever happened to you, often in the context of perpetually unhappy coworkers, family members or friends, you know how useless it is to fight against the creative power of two or more brains that have mind-melded a mutual mural about…you. The only useful thing one can extract from the misery is a warning against being part of that type of dismal discussion.
Even with honorable intentions, memories shape-shift over time.
Emotion tints memories. Next time you are in a generally happy mood, pull up an old memory, perhaps a time shared with a loved one who has passed. In contentment, reflect on the events of the day and the joy you felt with that loved one. Really sink into the memory. Next time you evoke that memory, it will have shifted a bit to emphasize the joyful aspects – the smile, the warmth of heart – whereas if the same memory came up when you were sad, somehow it would be tinted. You might notice that other memories that feel the same way easily come to the surface: that’s another aspect of memory. Our memories are linked by emotional flavor, not just content. That’s why someone who is angry at you seems to have a boundless recall for every stupid and disappointing thing you have ever done.
Words also shape how memories are shaped and stored. A car comes up from behind, passes you, enters your lane and, a half-mile later, ends up in the ditch. You pull over to call 911 and see if you can be of assistance. Later you are questioned about your observations. How much did the car swerve? If asked, how much did the car fishtail…your memory will subtly adjust. The next time you recall it, the film may contain a touch more veering about.
Personal beliefs and biases enter the picture, too, and help form “memories” that are less than precise. It might be as subtle as “assuming” that someone meant something and then sliding into believing that they implied it, and subsequently taking offense by something that was unsaid as if it had been a slap. It could take the form of filling in the blank in someone’s appearance or comportment based on biases. Alternately, beliefs or entire cosmologies are attributed to someone based on scraps of “evidence” and then merrily embraced as “truth.”
It’s an interesting dilemma, encompassing the Commandments (Thou shalt not bear false witness) and Pilate’s coyly avoidant, “What is truth?” False witness, after all, is not just perjury. It comprises gossip and unnecessary tale-telling, both inevitably not the whole truth, as any elementary school teacher can attest. It’s all the ways in which we might fill in the blanks, perhaps consciously but, I suspect, as often reflexively, justifying our own emotional wallow with imagined and projected details.
Isn’t that confabulous?