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Mark E. Williams, MDThe Art and Science of Aging Well

Why Our Memories Seem to

Change as We Age
How should we view our past?
Why is it that our memory is good enough to retain the least triviality that
happens to us, and yet not good enough to recollect how often we have told it
to the same person? Francois de La Rochefoucauld
According to anthropologists, millennia ago Homo sapiens made an
evolutionary leap inbrain capacity from which emerged three crucial
capacities. One of these is consciousness, our awareness of ourselves, our
ability to reflect on ourselves and not just to know, but to know that we know.
Especially amazing to confront have always been the sheer wonder of the
world, the power of sex and the mystery of death. Man is the only animal that
knows his fate: He is going to die.

The second capacity is language, the ability to symbolize the world and
arrange word symbols into a discourse. And then to play with those mental
symbols to create first stories and then abstractions: in short, to create a
world. What we think of as reality is as much produced by language as
reflected in it and its many worlds and many cultures. With these word
pictures of our physical, emotional, and social worlds the consciousness of
the young can be molded. The third crucial capacity of man is the creation of
culture, which derives from the awareness and language capacities.
Age changes our relationship with time: Our future shortens and our past
grows heavier. As Peanuts cartoonist Charles Shultz remarked, Once youre
over the hill, you begin to pick up speed. Our past was experienced at a time
when innumerable potentialities were open and now when looking back they
are frozen in time. There is a kind of magic in recollection that gives us a
sense of the person we were at one time with a context we did not have at the
time. In Charlottesville, Virginia the taxis have witty slogans on their trunks,
like Faulty boomerangs are non returnable or Corduroy pillars are making
headlines. One of my favorites is The older I get, the better I was. Mark
Twain wrote in his autobiography, When I was younger, I could remember
anything, whether it had happened or not; but my faculties are decaying now
and soon I shall be so I cannot remember any but the things that never
happened.
The past defines the present, which is the outlet to the future. The quality of
our future changes as we age from an indefinite and infinite one to a definitive
and finite one. To advance we must acknowledge the evolution that inevitably
has taken place in us over timeI am not the same person I was before. If I
fail to admit this development I will set up a fixed unchanging personality that
will continue to diverge from reality. Filled with increasing self-deception I will
try to race against the clock and ultimately I will lose that race. And yet if we
can recover and merge with the state of mind first experienced inchildhood we
have escaped from the power of age, for that mindset is the fountain of youth.
Pablo Picasso once said, It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a
lifetime to paint like a child. For Christians this sentiment is spread
throughout the New Testament. For example, Verily I say unto you,

Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not
enter therein. (Mark 10:15)
With age we can become trapped by our memories and in our own
uniqueness as individuals. We cannot escape from who we have been. A long
life can hold us captive especially if we cling to the unchanging past and are
experiencing our life primarily by looking through the rear view mirror.
Sometimes it is necessary and pleasurable, but it does not lead us forward.
The cement is setting but what is its shape? What is left for us to do with a
limited future and an almost solidified past? Should we use our remaining
time to improve our memory or should we look ahead and pursue
our dreams? Perhaps we can do both.