"Be Good, Be Careful, and Have Fun . . . In That Order"

Much of my work as an educator is informed by my memories of childhood. I grew up in neighborhoods in which I was free to roam, with or without other children, largely unsupervised by adults. That's how I remember it. My mother confirms the essence of my memories although not always the specifics. 

For instance, I have a clear memory of her regularly, in the tone of a joke, saying to me as I walked out the door, "Be good, be careful, and have fun . . . In that order." She insists she never said it, but it's such a strong memory for me that I adopted it as a sort of mantra for my own parenting. Who's right? Probably her. Does my memory count as a "false memory." Maybe.

"You have to begin to lose your memory," writes philosopher John Locke, "if only in bits and pieces, to realize that memory is what makes our lives. Life without memory is no life at all . . . Our memory is our coherence, our reason, our feeling, even our action. Without it we are nothing." But what is memory exactly? Today, we know a lot more about how memory works. We know, through experiment, that each time we recall a memory we alter it and that the things we recall most often are the memories that differ the most from actual events. We are, in fact, more creative storytellers than journalists when it comes to memory.

I've discussed this phenomenon with many people, all of whom agree that it must be true . . . For other people. They then tell me of a cherished memory that they know is entirely factual, but that a loved one denies ever happening, their point being that their loved one is misremembering. 

I've come to the opposite conclusion, however. I believe that my mother never said, "Be good, be careful, and have fun . . . In that order" even as I continue to remember her saying it. It makes sense from the perspective of the science. I've thought about those "moments" over and over. I've shared those "moments" with others. I've changed my opinion about what those moments meant to me. Those "moments" even shape my current life. And those moments likely never happened. I've thought about it a lot. It's me, not my mother, who has been actively recalling, and therefore, altering what really happened. For whatever reason, I've manufactured a memory.

I recently had a similar thing happen when I had lunch with an old girlfriend who I'd not seen in decades. Some of our memories matched, but the things I remember most clearly, the things I've thought about the most, never happened . . . At least as she remembers it. 

Yet even if our memories are unreliable and unstable, there is a basic truth in Locke's assertion. When we think of our lives, we are thinking of all those things that lead up to, and include, this day. 

"You can't change the past," we say, but obviously we can and do. The fact that we all do it, tells me it's an adaptive trait. As cognitive psychologist Donald Hoffman points out in his book The Case Against Reality, we've evolved not to commune with the "truth," but rather to perceive the world in ways that support our survival. In fact, Hoffman takes it a bit further, stating that it is a near mathematical certainty that the things we perceive do not exist as we perceive them, but rather we perceive things in way that support our survival. Nicolas Malebranche, a contemporary of Locke's, wrote, "The mind does not pay equal attention to everything it perceives. For it applies itself infinitely more to those things that affect it, that modify it, and that penetrate it, than to those that are present to it but do not affect it." This, of course, explains "selective memory," but it also, I think provides insight into why our memories are ultimately so unreliable. And why we must become creative storytellers in order to make sense of ourselves and our lives.

One of the reasons I like working with young children is that they do not possess decades of conscious memories. They are much more who they are, rather than who they were. And I, as an important adult in their lives will be part of the memories that will eventually become the raw material for the story they will weave about themselves. I take that responsibility very seriously, which is why I strive to first love them, then, secondly, get out of their way. Even if my mother never said those words, "Be good, be careful, and have fun . . . In that order," the story I've created about them embodies her love for me, the love that gave me confidence, that made me feel secure enough, to venture out into the world without her in order to, as she jokingly commanded me, have fun. 

I will never be able to replicate my own past, but I do what I can to create that feeling of love and independence for the children in my care.

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