This paper seeks to discuss about social memory and more particular childhood memories. Secondly, this paper will discuss the uses of childhood memory such as psychological interpretation. Lastly, this paper will discuss at length on the ways in which childhood and social memory influence of future well-being.
Human beings are complex beings. As people and what defines us is the diversity of the things that make us think in a certain way, those that make us do what we do and especially those that make believe certain things and live our lives in a certain way. We all were children at a certain point in our lives. Different people have different memories of what their pasts were. Some memories are happy while others are sad. Some people conserve the happy memories and repress that sad ones. In such a situation, this repression of other memories also has a great deal to say about the person.
Our memory is basically the process by which our brains receive, store and later use given information. Our memory, therefore, makes a large part of our living. When you meet people you will be able to have a conversation with them the next time that you meet them depending on what you remember. Our social lives therefore play around what we get to learn and what it is from that that we manage to store in our brains. From a social perspective, it is indeed important to note that what we recreate life and live the world as who we are. Who we are sometimes is not as clear as we may think. What we remember in life explains who we are, the core of our personalities. In most cases without knowing it, human beings remember what they chose to remember and this says a lot about someone’s interests in life. It explains largely who people are and what situations they are comfortable with in life.
Psychologists have often used memory to learn who people are. By what people remember, it is easy to notice a pattern in their behavior and in their thoughts. These patterns may be a formation of a persons’ personality, molding by their parenting. People may have also grown up a certain way having being shaped by their society. Peers and friends also play a major role of what we become. All these little stores of experiences in our memory can be deduced and inferences made about who we are.
Why is it so important to know who we are? A lot of dissonance exists in many people about the people that we really are. The conflict exists when one finds him or herself doing one thing but they believe that they are better than that. You may regard partying as a waste of time, your religion may constrain you not to take alcohol therefore while growing up, and you will have the belief that alcohol is bad enforced in you. Friends whom you have spent a greater time in life with may have no strong beliefs or constraints when it comes to alcohol or partying. As a person socialized by two different worlds, a little insight into the past may be needful when trying to know who you really are and what you believe and are comfortable doing. Past memories if explored play a crucial role in helping people live a life that coincide with their personalities.
On a different note, we may always sit on our capabilities and our potential by believing that we cannot possibly manage to be president of a club or a company or an organization for that matter. We may always feel inadequate in life for one reason or another; maybe an awful or embarrassing incidence in the past made us recoil from any kind of attention and so we may prefer to rather keep to ourselves.
Without discovery of why we do certain things, we may undermine our potential; we may also live our lives restrained. Often or not we are faced by a myriad of decisions to make as life requires us to constantly decide form one thing or the other. Such conflict in who we are can be a great hindrance to our being the best of who we can be. Psychologists have theorized that what we remember from our early childhood indeed is an easy solution to knowing ourselves. The reason behind this is that as children, we have a true expression of who we are, our expressions and reactions to life’s events are honest and a true expression of our inner selves.
People are constantly interacting with each other in their families, at work, at the gym, at our favorite restaurant. Overtime we may have noticed that we are always quarreling with our workmates while the same people may have positive relations with everyone else at the office. To understand whether it is pent up anger from our past that is causing negation with everyone is essential to our continued coexistence with everyone else. It is important to learn why you are comfortable with certain people and why you may not be comfortable with others. This way you can objectively live life taking advantage of your strengths as a person.
Memories of a favorite meal or dinner with family when specifically having a certain meal will tell you what you love to eat for example and this applies to our knowing our interests. The mind as stated earlier recalls that which impacted it in a certain way, whether positively or negatively. Memories of one soiling their pants while speaking in public as a kid may explain someone’s stage fright even in adulthood. The realization that it is due to a past negative experience that you cannot speak in front of a crowd is a great tool to you actually bracing yourself and going ahead to speak to a crowd of people. From a childhood memory of enjoying the attention from an embarrassing moment in front of a crowd, author Leman, deduces that he actually loved attention too much from people that he did not mind whether it was at his expense, he discovered he loves to make people laugh and to date has maximized on this by taking advantage of gatherings to entertain and teach by offering motivational and educational lessons.
It is important to be able to know what makes you angry and why. Our reasons for happiness, sadness, stress, depression are all necessary in our knowledge of our personal constructs. All in a bid to understand ourselves it is important to know how differently we see things. One may be agitated by an event that another person would regard a joke. In cases where things may agitate us needlessly, it would help to see a bigger picture than what our personal constructs from our past experiences have engraved in us.
Our perceptions of the world are shaped by our past. Our past as has been stated shapes our present and informs our future actions and steps. Without being explored adequately, our past may be altered by what we want to believe and a lot of crucial information to who we are locked up. This is how people find themselves living lies and believing they are who they really aren’t. Humanity has often been inconvenienced by dishonesty. If as a person you are dishonest to yourself then honestly you will not be hesitant to lie to someone else. Or steal or be dishonest in whatever other way. Many of us live lies, dreaming of what could be or what should be. Some adults in their old age haven’t yet accepted that life for them is what it is and will still find him or herself wishing on life as something else. Often you find that these kinds of people are unhappy.
Couples rely on a profound establishment of trust between two people. Two partners will have to relinquish all. The will have to give up a part of themselves to live harmoniously. Delving into ones past memory is necessary in establishing a happy and lasting relationship. You will be able to understand one another. The reason behind ones likes and dislikes what your partner loves and what they hate. Understanding different perceptions of the world is a tool that comes in very handy. One will be able to understand life yourself and substantiate the drive behind what we do and why we do what we do. Knowing a partner’s strengths and weaknesses and accepting them because of your own dynamic and wide world view is important to us, unfortunately we rarely realize this.
We are who we are. Who we are is shaped by our environment our personality and our perceptions of the world and ourselves. Memory as described by author Jacob Climo dictates the meaning that you find in life. Your memory is what will shape what life means to you. If you remember your father disciplining you to be him being resentful you probably do see or perceive the world to be an unpleasant place and will get agitated when for example someone spills a drink on you. On the contrary, another person may recall their dad punishing them as a gesture of love and care. This may be a more pleasant person that takes life easier, maybe more laid back and welcoming of people. They would be less suspicious of a stranger trying to establish a relationship with them. With the understanding that we are who we our pats has shaped us to be, we will compromise where and when need be in order to be able to coexist peacefully.
Our memories will shape our meaning of life at large; they will create reality for us and sustain what we believe to be true through the years. Social memory shapes what we believe to be right and what we practice. Social memory is that which we recall from past collective experiences with people. These are memories that we have that remind us what has been done in the past by our peers in school or at work for example. These usually encourage us to do one thing or another. Memories held dear by one from past parties with friends may leave one wishing on free Fridays to recreate such moments with friends. This may then become our present and how we will eventually live our future lives. What this research paper reiterates is that we know who we are the minute we know who we were during our childhood.
Our memory of the past is a major shield to traumatic experiences. The memory of going through a traumatic experience like losing a loved one earlier may help us be stronger in the case of loosing someone else. The twisted logic behind this assumption or theory is that people often earlier traumatized are normally ruined rather than built by it. In most case scenarios, girls who have gone through child abuse at earlier stages in life tend to recoil from social situations or any kind of confrontation with men. They may develop a lasting hostility and dislike for men to the extent of not being able to get a male partner with whom to live the rest of their life with. It is therefore debatable that memory can often be a shield to traumatic experiences.
The second critical analysis of the former statement is that people may shield themselves from traumatic experiences by locking away the painful memories. As mentioned earlier in the paper, locking away some memories especially bad ones will only lead us to live lies because reality will be camouflaged. Also we may end up facing a more complicated life due to internal conflict on who we really are and what we do. This ends up complicating one’s life more that life should be complicated.
We all interpret life differently. To conclude this research, we as human beings must realize that this essentially means that we cannot see the world the same way and consequently we will always be different. Our differences though do not mean that we cannot coexist. When conflicts due to our differences arise, it is proof of a lack of awareness of who we are personally. We need to look into the past therefore to know ourselves. With clear knowledge of our past, we will go a greater mile in peaceful coexistence. Racism, ethnicity, divorce and on a greater scale war are all matters that can be greatly minimized by humanity making the extra effort to coexist.
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