The Memory Monkey

The Memory Monkey

by Marco M. Pardi

Our memories are independent of our wills. It is not so easy to forget.” Richard Sheridan. 1775

All comments are welcome and will receive a response.

I’m entering the age when people think I should remember episodes of childhood and youth with perfect clarity, while forgetting what I had for breakfast, or if I had breakfast. Did I take my morning medications? Should I have one of those plastic boxes partitioned like ice trays into sections for the days of the week? Oops, there I did it. I referenced ice trays, items many of our readers have no experience or conception of. I saw them at a garage sale. I did. Honest.

Of course, in our instant fix culture there are over the counter pills and potions for memory loss and other “senior moments”. Currently they generate millions of dollars in yearly sales. With only one problem: they don’t work. A just released study by the Global Council On Brain Health reports that three billion dollars were spent on these “brain” supplements in 2016 and this is expected to nearly double by 2023. Furthermore, since the Trump administration prioritizes making money for a very few people over safety for the many, the FDA and the USDA have each had their budgets cut, leaving many potentially unsafe supplements on the market with little to no oversight. Every science based examination of the claims advertised so freely reaches the same conclusion: “a massive waste of money.”

Since I habitually listen for internal contradictions in cultural messages I find the concerns about memory somewhat amusing. Whatever happened to “forgive and forget”? I can tell you that, for what it’s worth, I don’t forget. And that goes for good and bad. Forgive? I think I don’t forgive so much as I experience a tapering off of the desire to achieve revenge. Actually, I don’t like the word revenge. I prefer restoring balance, what some might call justice. I’m even okay with some other person or other circumstances meting out justice, what some would call karma, although I cannot deny the satisfaction of being the agent.

But what about this faculty of ours, this thing we call memory? Obviously, non-human animals also have it, and the case has been made for a form of it in plants as well. There are even persistent claims of “cellular memory”, citing cases of transplant recipients who find themselves with a talent or preference characteristic of their donor. But does it interrupt their sleep, or intrude on their thoughts “out of the blue”?

There have been periods in my life when I wished there were a pill or procedure to excise the memory of certain periods in my life, or at least specific aspects of them. Part of the attraction of running away when very young was the prospect of being able to “start anew”, with a history of only my own making. But I realized I could not leave my mind behind, and with it came my memories. A package. Deal with it.

Years ago I knew a young woman who, in her then defunct marriage, had become severely clinically depressed. At that time the go-to treatment was electro-shock therapy. I had been a fan of that technique in graduate school, viewing it then as I would later view re-booting my computer. Unfortunately, the procedure in those years was little advanced beyond the Frankenstein approach (“It’s alive! It’s alive!”). As a result of the treatments, rather than missing specific aspects of her past, she was missing whole sections. The procedure has been revised lately and is experiencing a cautious renaissance. But her damage was done.

But now the landscape is changing. As early as five years ago Scientific American, a very highly respected resource, ran an article on editing memory. Although the subjects involved were mice, the techniques employed were transposable to humans. Specific learning was excised from the rats’ brains. The implication is that once this is more refined it can be applied to human PTSD cases, excising the specific memories and even the trigger points if necessary. This is not “brain washing” in the 1950’s Manchurian Candidate sense; it is selective reprogramming of the brain such that the individual does not have a sense of “something missing”, as did the woman cited above.

But two questions arise: any event (as recorded as a memory) has a context. As with cancer surgery which hopes for “clean margins”, how far into the context must we cut to ensure the removal of the memory? And, what are you willing to give up?

For several years now I’ve approached unpleasant memories not as things to be suppressed – that doesn’t work anyway – but as opportunities to learn. Getting into them, and looking around, gives me a better understanding of how the events happened in the first place. This strengthens tactics and strategies to avoid a repetition. But it also offers me an opportunity to question why I keep bringing them up. Is there something not yet resolved? Sure, there have been times when I felt I was in a “snowglobe”, bad memories cascading down with near white-out force, me unable to fully grasp any particular one and fully resolve it.

Buddhist meditation teaches us about the monkey, flitting from limb to limb and chattering at us for attention. That’s the maelstrom of thoughts pouring across our minds at any given moment. Some of them are painful memories triggered, perhaps, by an unexplained association with the previous thought. Novices try to still the mind and have no thoughts, assuming that is nir vana – beyond wind. That simply cannot happen; the brain/mind matrix will continue on its way, with the additional input of the novice’s struggle. So Buddhism teaches us to let the monkey scramble about, but pay no attention to anything it does. In other words, don’t develop perception into conception. Or as the old saying goes, Don’t make something of it. When you’re in a blizzard, don’t try to see each snow flake.

Years ago I tried to learn to control my dreams. Predictably, I slid into the Am I there yet? syndrome. Maybe the best effect was that it was tiring and that helped me get to sleep.

So I’ve decided to let the monkey have its fun. Just as I decided my nightly efforts at On Demand dreams were futile, I’ve decided there are times when ignoring the monkey not only causes me to miss something I should give thought to, but it sets me up for endless re-run loops until I do. But that doesn’t mean I need to have unpleasant reactions to what the monkey is showing me. I learned in grammar school that the best way to deal with a loudmouth oaf is silence. The trick is to not let yourself become someone who “suffers in silence”.

How about you, dear reader? Does your monkey have a name?