Experience Trumps Memory
Picture your best possible experience—a ten-year cruise through the Caribbean, maybe, or traveling across the galaxy, or dinner with God himself and a 1947 Cheval Blanc Vandermeulen. How much would you be prepared to pay for this ideal experience?
Take a moment to jot down a few key words describing the most wonderful experience you can imagine, and what your highest bid would be.
A follow-up question: how much would you be willing to pay if you weren’t able to remember it afterward? If you had no idea what your Caribbean yacht even looked like. If you climbed out of your space capsule back on Earth and didn’t know whether the planets in faraway solar systems were green, blue, or red. If you couldn’t recall whether God was a man or a woman, let alone the taste of the wine. If you could rack your brains as long as you liked—and find nothing left, not even a trace. Most people I ask reply that such an experience is not worth having.
You probably feel the same. But how much would you be willing to pay for the experience if you could remember it afterward for one day? One year? One decade?
Sadly there are no scientific studies on this question that was originally posited by Daniel Kahneman. The responses I’ve gathered are anecdotal, but the general consensus is that experiences only count if you remember them. Let’s call this phenomenon the memory bank. The longer we live with a memory, the greater the value it accrues. If a (positive) memory remains in the bank until the day you die, it will in retrospect be highly valued. If it only lasts for half that time, its value is halved—and so on, until its value reaches zero. Without memory, the experience is perceived as entirely valueless. This is surprising, and it makes no sense. Surely it’s better to experience something wonderful than not—regardless of whether you remember it. After all, in the moment you’ll be having a fabulous time! And once we’re dead, you and I will forget everything anyway—because there’ll no longer be any “you” or any “I.” If death is going to erase your memories, how important is it to schlep them with you until your very final moment?
It would be interesting to explore the emotional world of dementia patients, because that’s precisely what they experience: a series of transitory events, moment by moment, without any subsequent memory of them. As far as we can tell, this also describes the emotional life of most animals. They have moments, but few or no memories. You sometimes find carers in old folks’ homes treating their dementia patients harshly and arguing that “they won’t remember it anyway.” This may be true, but the patients will certainly experience it in the moment. Their experiencing self is operating just fine—and the same goes for you.
Studies show that people feel happier while remembering positive experiences, especially when viewing them through the rose-tinted glasses of nostalgia. Many psychologists have concluded from this that we should take time to deliberately recall happy moments from the past. A dubious proposition. Why shouldn’t we put this time toward creating wonderful experiences for ourselves in the here and now? The effort of consciously experiencing the present moment seems to me no greater than that of dusting off old memories. On the contrary. The things we experience in the present are also much more forceful, more intensely flavored and colorful than our fogged-up recollections. You don’t have to experience a parachute jump or the perfect sunset to enjoy the moment. Even if, like now, you’re sitting on a chair reading this chapter, you will (I hope, anyway) experience a series of enjoyable chunks of time. Be consciously aware of these moments, physically perceive them, instead of scrabbling for memories. You won’t dig up much anyway. Of a holiday, for instance, we only remember the high (or low) and the final part. That’s Kahneman’s peak–end rule, as we learned in Chapter 20. We may also recall two or three other scenes, but that’s the lot. Yet people still think they can replay their memories like watching a film. No. Memories are one-dimensional, shallow, abstract, frequently mistaken, partially fabricated and ultimately unproductive. In short, we overvalue memory and undervalue the experienced moment.
Finally, in the 1960s, the awareness of the “here and now” came into the spotlight and young people started experimenting with LSD, free sex and “happenings.” In 1971, the celebrated Harvard professor Richard Alpert (known by his Indian guru name Ram Dass) published his bestselling Be Here Now. You couldn’t come up with a better motto for this approach to life. Ram Dass mainly propagated ancient Buddhist teachings, adapting them for the West. Today, the 1960s “feeling of being in the moment” is back in fashion, now labeled as “mindfulness.” An elite group of urban hipsters, yoga teachers and lifestyle coaches is utterly obsessed with it.
That’s all well and good, except that mindfulness is often confused with “not thinking about the future.” A mistake. The beloved platitude “live each day as if it were your last,” ever popular on calendars, is an idiotic piece of advice that will send you catapulted into hospital, prison or the grave in next to no time. Part of the good life is making provision for the future, recognizing dangers early and giving them a wide berth.
The takeaway? Our brains cope automatically with all three layers of time—past, present and future. The issue is which one we concentrate on. My suggestion is not to avoid making long-term plans, but once they’re in place to focus wholly on the now. Make the most of your present experiences instead of worrying about future memories. Savor the sunset instead of photographing it. A life of wondrous yet forgotten moments is still a wondrous life, so stop thinking of experiences as deposits for your memory bank. One day you’ll be on your deathbed, and your account will be permanently closed.