Deleting Memories

 

While lying on bed this morning and deleting messages from my sent box on my phone, I remembered Gabbie Bagasao-Santiago all of a sudden. She was the one who introduced me to the words "deleting memories". And I couldn't help but agree with that concept as it is true. Deleting messages from sent box and inbox was a hard thing to do. Especially since I am not the type who cleans up their SMS daily, it takes me an awful lot of messages and time before I start deleting them. I have this constant fear that I might erase something important. Especially in this business where approval are done via SMS these days, every single message matters.

 

I am writing about this because something struck me this morning. Can we ever delete memories from our heads? Can we, even if we try our darnedest best, ever (forgive and) forget? Or is this just a statement to tell other people that we have simply moved on.

 

I think most of us, if not all, had a traumatic experience as child, or growing up. In my case, there were instances where I got hurt so badly I know I just want to forget about it. There were a lot: from school, relationships, decision-lapses, friends and family. And there are certainly moments too that which I just want to hold on to forever because they were just too special.

 

But what if we wake up one day and realized you have involuntarily deleted those memories? Will you be happy? Will you even care? Will you even remember that something was lost, if to begin with the stimuli are all gone.

 

I remember one of my favorite movies of all time  "ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND". Kate Winslet and Jim Carrey had sought the help of a specialist who could literally erase the ugly memories from your brain. Using the lobes and their purposes, I am assuming that the amygdala is being manipulated to remove the necessary history out of the brain. But that’s fiction, at the moment. And until we find that possibility we only have two options: to repress memory or keep trying to forget.

As Freud puts it, repression is the act of compartmentalizing thoughts in the subconscious mind where it is relatively inaccessible (as opposed to regular thoughts). So that bad when things occur to us, we either push them away hoping we could deal with it at a better time, hoping it will change, or just twisting some truth to be able to cope with it.

There are degrees of repression. And the level to which how deep it is buried also depends on how good we are at compartmentalizing thoughts.

Repressed memories do not disappear. They will eventually creep their way back into the conscious. To some that may appear as a “slip”. To others in forms of nightmares. To others it comes into another form, a medical condition wherein you have dysfunctional behavior and to some unexplainable anxiety.

Repression is subconscious. Suppression is the active/conscious decision to remove thoughts.

I remember, when I was younger I would always change how things were setup in my head so I could cope with reality. And this is an effective way to live in sanity.

And the others will just never do anything. But the best way to deal with this is really face reality and move on. Running away from memories will not help. Erasing memories is far more serious.

But come to think of it, why do we have to settle with ugly memories. There are plenty of opportunities to come up with beautiful memories. Our brains are setup not like phones and computers with limited capacity to store. Our brains are like mega hardwares that have no limits. We can take that opportunity to add more beautiful memories.

We can just replace them with versions that are fond to us. In this case, we don’t even have to delete memories. This is what they call counting your blessings.

I am counting. Are you?