Modern Good Reads discussion

Memories. Thanks Dianne for starting this discussion and for writing so eloquently (as you always do!) about your memories.

I particularly related to this: "I read somewhere that every time we remember something, it strengthens that memory in the brain; it kind of makes the groove deeper, like on an old vinyl record. I believe it. There are some memories that rise spontaneously whenever they're triggered by something."

When I was writing my Mutinous Boomer book, by the very nature of the stories I was telling, I had to go way back into my memory bank. It ended up being a wonderful and very cathartic process - remembering. There was a place on the top of a mountain that was almost always deserted where I would go to write. I could sit there and stare off into the clouds, in the silence, and was often completely transported back in time. Once I could see a person's face from many year's back, or walk through a door from long ago in my mind, the whole scene would open up like an internal movie. It was frequently quite emotional, going back like that, very moving to see old friends, and relive special times. The fact that I wrote them down (whether I used them in the book or not) solidified those memories, made the "groove deeper" in my vinyl record, as you said.

Yes, like you, I believe in living in the present. But, life would be rather one dimensional without our memories. So here's to remembering the positive, beautiful, complicated, bitter-sweet, difficult, silly, poignant and all of the other experiences that make up this grand thing we call life! Merry Christmas and a very Happy New Year of new memories!

You can find Marsha Roberts on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Marsha...

Dianne,
Thanks for the Christmas Eve thoughts. Memories are the stuff of our unique reality. You always make me think.

If it were not for memories, just think of how many mistakes and bad choices we might make over and over and over again.

Is it insanity or ignorance, is it stubbornness or is it the need to be right? Whatever is it that makes Governments of all shades continuing to make such moronic decisions? I guess it is easy when your citizens pay the price in money and blood.. How many people in charge remember the mistakes of Vietnam, Cuba and Korea, none of the men in charge that support the al-Qaeda units in Syria. While we the little people remember the personal pains and joys the leaders leave the pains to its citizens. The joys are maintained in buildings of power. Damn it this old year has left me angry, but I can only hope we have better memories in 2015.

I learned a long time ago that the terms "practical governance", "honest politician", and "military intelligence" are all oxymorons.

Our government is the one we deserve, because we voted for it. Remember, in a representative democracy all we can expect from our elected officials is C+ work on a good day.

But let's get back to memories. They are subjective and are shaped by our perceptions, which, in turn, are shaped by earlier memory. As we age must we become bitter and remember and perceive only the bad, the ugly, and the moronic? I hope not. Somewhere inside is the dewy-eyed child who can remember and relive with joy.

Make of that, and me, what you will.

Maybe that is the problem, all you expect is a C+...and all you will get is C-. But that dewy-eyed child or yourself were lucky not to have worked in the wTC. Maybe you will remember Malala more than Usama bin Laden. Or maybe you have not lost sons or friends in Iraq, but maybe the WMD were just an excuse. That dewy-eyed child maybe still child, wait till she grows up. Good memories we all have them until we visit the graveyards with all the little flags on them. That is definitely a failing grade, heroes for the ego of governments.

Life is no big thing. It is a thousand little things.
Sometimes we hardly notice the thousand wonderful little things going on around us; because we are so focused upon waiting for that ever elusive big thing to happen.

I am no psychologist; but I personally believe that the brain possesses some kind of natural defense mechanism that gradually dilutes the emotional impact of extremely bad memories over time.

Mothers tend to reminisce about the wonderful feeling of holding their newborn infant for the first time rather than focus upon the pain associated with childbirth.

Military veterans talk about all of the great young men with whom they had the privilege to serve and the fun times they shared rather than the horrors of war.

Parents boast of their children's accomplishments more often than they complain of the times they drove them nearly insane with their less admirable traits.

Of course, there are exceptions to every rule; so I believe that there are some who aggressively fight against the brain's defense mechanism and become obsessed with bad memories, sometimes even exaggerating them and falling into acute bouts of depression.

Jim is right, life is no big thing... but again it depends on where you live! A few month ago while in Syria I saw the remnants of a car bomb, yes life is no big thing, not to the poor or the suicide bomber, is his Paradise the big thing? A young woman survivor will have her big memories now, the missing siblings and parents, the worry about her next safe home. She was 17, that is her life to remember. Not many good little things will override that day in Sept. 20013. But here we are talking of our little feel good moments, of our cherished days, of a safe world as we see it. Now in turn ask a survivor of the Boston Marathon. Ask what his biggest memory is. We in North America tend to disregard the world outside of ours and so somehow we belittle the true state of affairs.
We focus on these little feel good things, instead of learning from the hard lessons we are exposed to, we have become a stagnant society, we have forgotten, yesterday was a day to be learned from, yesterday is already history. Malala wrote about her yesterday, will we remember it as she does? For many, that elusive big thing they are waiting for is not always good! Ask a suicide bomber if he is waiting for paradise! Memories are forced upon us by circumstances beyond our control, for those that believe the glass is half full, well, there are millions that do not have a glass, or the water to wet their lips.

Let me be trite by passing along something from a time when we were obsessed with righting wrongs: "If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem." Bad memories (and circumstances, events, situations) can best be born by remembering better ones and imagining solutions that we can work toward in order to right wrongs and horrible injustices.

Without something good to remember and positive to offer, we end up doing nothing but producing philippics.

Yes right now we are not righting wrongs, we are creating wrongs because we deny the memory of the wrongs. And you are still doing nothing but dwell in a vacuum of denial. Read the books so many espouse here on good reads, the biographies and then tell me you remember.

Iran and the shah. Allende and Pinochet. The revolt in Hungary. The Iron Curtain. At least 5000 years of institutional misogyny. Too often we have supported dictators like Diem in SVN. We always have good intentions, but often we choose the wrong actions. Show me a country that has done better. I remember. I remember well. I've paid my dues in my own inadvisable war. As long as we humans are what we are, there will be memories of misery and injustice. I don't deny them, but don't cherish them either.

However, this thread was supposed to be about memories. I choose to believe that one must often revisit the good memories. Life is unbearable without them. Perhaps the reason that the good old days are the good old days is because we are rewarded when we think of them. The bad times are not so rewarding to recall.

Hi, reading the thread above, I think some of this group might be interested in my recently-released novel,Crystal Ships, a saga of the 1960s/70s, or what some are now calling the "long Sixties," roughly the period between the election of JFK and the fall of Saigon. Whether you lived through that period as young adults (older boomers and those who came just before them) or as children (younger boomers), the memories of that era seem especially vivid -- and often highly selective. So much we want to remember, the music and sense of new opportunity, and so much we want to forget, whether domestic turmoil or foreign adventures! I remember when I was young,thinking World war II and the Great Depression were the ancient past, but three or four times those years have passed since the Sixties and many young peple today are still into the music of that day and relate to the tragedies of that period. The discussion here makes me happy that I turned to that period to write about, as it seems to still produce a rich multitude of topics to pull into your story, yet lacks any consensus as to the lessons to be drawn from it.