Ask Lemmy

Mate, I look at it this way: if you've forgotten your memory, how would you know that you've lost it? You'ld just carry on.

There are people who exist with a syndrome where they have nearly perfect memory recall of their lived life and can remember nearly every moment of their lives very clearly.

Most of the people who live with it do not enjoy the experience.

Surprisingly, forgetting is a necessary and healthy thing, especially when it comes to things like traumatic experiences.

There's actually been several social scientists who claim that the permanent memory of the internet is extremely damaging to young people because they literally cannot escape every deeply embarrassing mistake they made in their youth. It follows them, haunts them, colors every aspect of their life, especially if the embarrassing moment causes bullying against the young person, leaving them constantly afraid of someone noticing them lest that person bully them for their past embarrassments. They advocate the idea that society and humans need to be able to forget to have healthy lives.

Its not so bad. Just continue to be your best and continue to improve. Be nice. Be generous, kind, caring, charitable. Go out of your way sometimes to be good to people.

Ive had a few concussions, been knocked out a few times, and 1 traumatic brain injury. (Accident prone). I know im forgetting a bunch, but I cant remember what im forgetting, so it doesn't really affect me generally.

Ive had a fairly eventful life, at times exciting life. Ive been around the world. Done missionary work in Mexico and Peru, helping an orphanage building a well, visiting a youth jail in Mexico. Sailed thd Amazon river bringing medicine/water/supplies/bibles to different villages on the Amazon river. Er...

Thats all to say, if youre a good person and do good things, people will remember and can remind you again later if you forget!

Its dangerous to live shitty acting shitty treating people like shit AND have a bad memory. If you forget who you were shitty to and not watching your back thats trouble. Better to just be remembered as a good guy.

Memories fade.

Take tons of pictures and videos now. Make sure you have storage and backups.

When I was younger I didn't like taking pictures.

When I got older and had kids I didn't want to spend all my times taking pictures. We were "building memories" was my excuse.

Now all I have are memories, but those will disappear when I cease to exist. I don't like that one bit.

Start journaling now.

I'm 51 and I have an astonishingly complete long term memory, I can remember parts of being 2 years old, and pretty much everything from age 4 onward. I mean not every single day in kindergarten or anything like that, but I have a pretty good grasp on what my daily life was like most of the time. I kept a friends only online blog for years, and when I've reread it, there's only bits and pieces I don't immediately remember, nothing significant, but when I read it I have good recall of what happened, it's just not immediately on the surface of my mind.

My short term memory is sometimes iffy, it's largely due to stress though from my violent ex, but it improves when I am feeling safer.

I think this is because I read so much.

You can get genetic testing for Alzheimers done; I lived with the Fear for many years until I got the testing done and found I didn't have the gene... such a relief. I'm still a forgetful fuck though

Only one way to save them. Write a diary or a mini biography. Just pick some stories you like and write them down and they become permanent.

Not really. Just because you can't actively remember something doesn't mean it's lost. Just the pathways to that memory are not being stimulated at the time. There will be random times you remember something you thought you lost but the brain is resilient.

Sounds quite simple - if you are healthy, nothing to do. If you fear losing memories - write them down. Like, a diary or journal, but you now write down what happened in the past, how you saw it, how you experience it. That way you have memories written down. You can also over time re-read them and update and double check do you still remember them the same way you used to, or do your memories get "watered down" over time.

Write down your favorite ones, take pictures and get them PRINTED videos future you will thank you

The self is an illusion. If you want to be happy, forget.

Was in an abusive long term relationship. I remember as I was breaking out of it suddenly remembering things I was legitimately repressing. I hated that.

I will say though on the idea of the death of the current self, that is sort of inevitable and absolutely neccery for the future you to exist. Kind of like how us now are different people then when we are 5 years old, and that's a good thing, even if our existence at 5 was also a good thing.

Yeah, I remember vividly waking up one day at the end of my teenage years and realizing that I almost completely forgot my childhood, now I just see flashes when I try to remember it.

It's why I don't believe in biographies, no way you remember your entire childhood.

Honestly, going through and getting therapy and doing the work nowadays, I'm more afraid of the ones I'll find than the ones I'll eventually lose.

Yes, very much so. Everyone here talked at length about this already, but I remembered the book Flowers for Algernon, which, among several other more significant things in the book, talks about this.

I really recomend you read the book before this spoiler, since it kinda kills the moment.

As someone with shitty memory: I forget a lot. Whole holidays, people, what I ate yesterday... I have always been that way, and so far I've been doing quite ok in life.

But while I forgot how it felt in a past, shitty job, I don't forget how I promised myself to never work for such a boss again. Or how 16-year old me decided to stay in school aftet trying out metalworking over a summer. I may forget how it was, but I rarely forget what conclusion I drew from it. And that is what defines me as a person, not that I remember the face of my condescending, stupid boss.

Also, while it sucks, my life is my present. My past might be entirely hallucinated, and I might be hit by a bus tomorrow. But now, here, I am alive.

Well if you forget them, you wouldn't remember them to forget them.

Though seriously, I find interviews, photos, videos even of people telling stories helps. It's the same idea that documentaries use to tell stories.

Having medical first hand experience with this: your long term memory is safe. Don't be scared.

alzheimer's on both sides of family so its real possibility for me. that's a better fate than being sane and stuck to a chair with nothing to do like my great grandpa. There are worst fates. Control what you can like treating your body right. Its all you can do.

Memories are not permanent, it's not their nature.

Having this “backstory” (for lack of a better term), is what drives me forward, without those memories, like if I get a concussion and forgot everything, I wouldn’t really be… well… “me” anymore

Emotional memories is how we develop a sense of self. So if you are really attached to who you are then it will be terryfing to loose who you are.

But we can do really wacky stuff with our memories. We can delude ourselfs into makeing new false memories or misremembering them.

Also you constantly get new memories and change who you are, so you aren't the same person as you were years ago.

I have grown up without that sense of self and I had to sculpt one from the ground up. So I am not really terrified of loosing the sens of self as I can make one once again. It will be different but it will still be ME.

yes and no.

I remember everything. well, I guess it's better to say I remembered everything.

until 2020 I remembered everything and had a near 95% recall. after I got covid and stress/anxiety ate away at my sanity it's more like 80% now. My age is also a factor.

remembering everything, every detail, did me more harm than good honestly. all the embarrassing moments in my life from my first class recital in kindergarten where I fucked up my lines to the time a hooked up with a "dead fish".

I'm on the other side of my life now and most the crap I remember isn't worth it.

there are some good memories I'd like to keep, but when I do finally forget them (and I will forget them), I won't even know I forgot anything at all.

I have very similar feelings towards my memories. I'd like to tell you why and offer a solution that's been very transformative for me -- and even for those closest to me.

Writing them down is one of the best things you can do here. Maybe for yourself in general, but that's a different rabbit hole.

I'm approaching 30 and it's only for the past couple of years that I've been journalling things consistently. I started after stumbling upon a very old notebook that I used for all sorts of stuff: writing short bits of fiction, making small notes, processing my feelings, doodling, etc. Between that moment and the oldest entry passed maybe 5-6 years at the time -- and I was shocked to find out how much of that I had forgotten to a point that I felt a jolt reading about them; like a memory injected into my brain, suddenly and all at once.

I can't say every single one of them was pleasant, but over the years, each and every one of them felt valuable. I can't imagine what it would feel like to be reading about your past self from 10, 20, 30 years ago -- that's gotta be like reading about someone else entirely, but much weirder, because you know you're the same person.

Write that down. Don't overthink it -- don't look for systems, don't optimize, don't make it pretty. Just write, and in time, you'll find the way that works for you the most.

And backup. You're one accident away from losing years or decades worth of your life's most dearest memories. If you write by hand, either take photos and back them up (multiple times, different mediums), or digitalize them and then do multiple backups as well. I am speaking from experience.

I've found that you retain the important stuff, and unfortunately the embarrassing stuff.

Memory aids are a thing. So if a picture, song, smell, or object helps trigger a fond memory, then keep that thing around. Failing that, writing things down can help unlock the rest of a memory.

Music, and scent are the two main memory triggers though. If you can link a memory to one of those things then you're golden.

If you are referring to Alzheimer's then yes. Few things I find more terrifying than forgetting who I am. You gotta keep your brain in shape. Reading books, doing puzzles, and learning languages help with that.

if I get a concussion and forgot everything, I wouldn’t really be… well… “me” anymore

I get what you mean by this. It's been my theory for a while that your memories are "you", so it's no longer "you" if you lose even half of your memories. You're an entirely different person. Everything that we are, are contained in these memories. If you cloned a person then automatically, they will be a different person from the start. Simply because the memories they make will be different and are no longer identical. It's why I think if someone loses their memories through diseases like Alzheimer's or dementia, it's no longer "them".

Hell, every time you go to sleep, you will wake up an entirely different person. Ship of Theseus style. Your memories and even the cells in your body are slowly being replaced by new ones. So... in a way, every single second of our life, we are no longer the "me" that we were and we are now someone else.

I'm not terrified, but I am a bit of a data hoarder and that includes my memories. So what I did was buy one of these things and now whenever I take my dog for a walk I record an audio log. I've got over ten years of them at this point. For most of that time it was just sitting stored in a folder as a bunch of audio files in subfolders by date, but in the past year or two thanks to the sudden advances in AI I've written up a Python script that transcribed them all and lets me search the transcripts. I'm expecting in another year or two I'll be able to feed all this into a local AI and be able to talk to it about this stuff.

So maybe start making logs like this, knowing that someday you'll be able to do some neat stuff with them.

Meh, you won't know what you forgot. And when you die you won't know how it's all gone. Best bet is to have kids - tell them your stories when they're young (and can't runaway). They'll remember for a bit and tell their kids. In a way your memories will last forever.

I think memory works different for different people. I am nearly 30 and I don't really remember much from elementary school (I mean the general experience, not the knowledge of course), nor a big part of my early life up to like 13-14 years old (but it might be connected to childhood trauma).

I am pretty good at learning new words in foreign languages and other similar stuff though.