I came across an article on Wired.com about a woman who wrote a book about how she remembers every minute detail about her life, from the age of 8 onwards. The article went on to dispel this apparent case of perfect memory and put it down to a form of OCD, whereby the woman in question, through a practice of keeping extensive and detailed journals of every day of her life and re-reading them over and over again, had come to memorize every detail of her life.
Link to Article
While the reality of this may seem like a nightmare, it made me wonder what it would be like, to truly be able to remember your entire life in exact detail, without that OCD aspect of it. Would it in fact be possible? What would it be like to be able replay in your mind the feelings and thoughts had at that moment over and over again? This includes the good and the bad. Would we be more insightful about our own motivations and personalities? Would it be painful and exhausting, or would it be highly useful and enjoyable?
In a hedonistic way, I think that being able to go over positive events in my life could become a bad habit - I'd want to replay those moments over and over again for the sheer pleasure. But would I be able to replay them with the same emotions I had then, knowing what I know now, in the after? Somehow that seems unlikely.
How useful would it really be to not be able to 'put the past behind me', and be able to re-experience all the negative moments over again on cue? Would I feel things differently because of what happened after? Could I learn something from this ability?
Or could I just have the memories but not the exact intense feelings of the time, but instead some kind of evolved emotion relating to the event, despite its immediacy and reality in the recollection?
I often have situations where I wish I could remember certain things more precisely. Like the first time I recognized that I am me. Or the first time I knew I wanted to be an artist. Or the first time I swam in the sea. Or any good memory of my father. Funny there are a lot of firsts in this list. I guess it would be nice to still have the awe and surprise of a child in certain situations...just the wonder of new things.
Do you think it would be good to remember everything? Why is our memory so patchy? Why can't we be more like computers in that sense? Would you like to be able to remember everything, including the feeling you had at the time? Would this be useful to you?