Watch the video at the bottom of this blog or visit https://youtu.be/Csrn0wd5Ky8.
We often consider memories to be solid facts; framed within
a moment of time, we remember actions and people as if we are watching a movie
in which the scene has been filmed and canned and is now frozen forever like
Rhett Butler in the doorway telling Scarlett he doesn’t give a damn. But what
if our memories are not accurate representations but they are merely our
perception of what occurred, and we have carried with us not true reality
encapsulated in a moment of time but a flawed understanding of what might have
transpired?
A few years ago, my doctor abruptly closed his office,
leaving his patients to scramble for medical care. Friends referred me to
another doctor in town and I showed up for my appointment wearing khaki slacks
and a royal blue blouse. I completed the paperwork and a nursing assistant took
me to the exam room to discuss particulars. She noted that I had written my
vocation as “author” and she called me a liar; she said it was obvious that I
worked at Wal-Mart because I was wearing the Wal-Mart “uniform”. (Who knew blue
and khaki was a uniform?)
She then asked me about my medical history, and I explained
that I was taking Lyrica (a non-opiate, non-addictive, non-psychoactive
medication that is frequently prescribed for fibromyalgia) due to nerve damage caused
by a botched heart ablation that had been carefully documented in my medical
records. A few minutes later, after the nursing assistant had left the room,
the doctor entered. Before I could speak, he held up his hand to silence me and
told me that he had only come into the room to tell me that he did not want me
as a patient and he did not prescribe pain medication. He then walked out
without giving me a chance to respond.
If you were to speak to that nursing assistant, no doubt she
would relay her memory of that day: how a Wal-Mart employee tried to disguise
herself as an author to get pain pills. She might have relayed that information
to the doctor as well, and without checking the classification of Lyrica and when
and how it is used, he jumped to the conclusion that I was a drug addict there
to get opiates for non-existent pain—which is how I was treated. But their
memories of that encounter would be flawed by their own perceptions. I have
never worked at Wal-Mart, I’ve had 21 books published to date, I have never
taken opiates—and I don’t even drink because I never want to lose control of my
own senses and actions.
In writing, we see everything through the lens of the
character. Their telling of the story (called point of view) is impacted by
their beliefs and their often-flawed perception. It may be impacted by their
religion or spiritual beliefs, by their cultural and societal upbringing, and
even by what they want to see versus what is really unfolding before them.
An example is a comparison of books about the American Civil
War. Shelby Foote was a Mississippian (born November 17, 1916 in Greenville,
the heart of the Mississippi Delta, died June 27, 2005 in Memphis) who wrote,
among other things, The Civil War: A Narrative, which contributed
to Ken Burns’ acclaimed documentary series The Civil War. The books are written
from the point of view of a Mississippi Southerner that remembered the class
system of the Deep South, the ingrained beliefs, cultural and societal
influences, and within the framework of many that still fly the Confederate
flag today.
Compare his work to The Twentieth Maine by John J.
Pullen, about the 20th Maine Infantry Regiment led by Joshua
Lawrence Chamberlain. Pullen was born in Amity, Maine in 1914. In contrast to
Foote’s Southern prose, Pullen’s work is written from the perspective of
Northerners, framed in their commitment to keep the United States intact,
surrounded by a culture that did not understand—and was horrified by—the slave
trade in the Deep South, impacted further by a Mainer’s cultural and societal
influences.
Each author tells the stories of Antietam, Chancellorsville,
Spotsylvania, Fredericksburg, and Gettysburg and both culminating with Lee’s
surrender at Appomattox. Both authors relied heavily on letters, journals and
records of men that fought in those battles, yet each tells of a completely
different experience. Even when their days were the same, consisting of forced
marches through mosquito-infested swamps or hunkering down in ice and snow
seeking to survive against frigid temperatures and wicked winds, they tell
completely different stories because each is not a snapshot of memories but
snapshots of perception and their roles within them.
Whether your memories consist of moments in your childhood,
work days or relationships, it is often stunning how differently someone that
was with you remembers the same events. Taken in this context, our memories are
not actually reality with a firm, unmovable setting or scene—but our individual
perceptions of moments in time.
In psychology, subjects are often brought back to those
moments not only to relive them but to reframe them, and in reframing them they
rewrite their own history.
Join the discussion about this topic and more by joining me
on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/pmterrell.author/.
Watch the video below or visit https://youtu.be/Csrn0wd5Ky8:
