Preview

Our Reality Is Based on Our Memories

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
741 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Our Reality Is Based on Our Memories
Our reality is based on our memories – about what we want to see. Depending on what we choose to remember shapes who we are and our reality. Some people may choose to remember all the good times in their life and perceive the world around them to be carefree and happy. Some may remember certain choices during their adolescence and regret those choices. Everyone’s reality is different which makes us unique, as we choose to remember and forget different things. Sometimes we may not get to remember something someone else remembers since we never experienced it, but other times we share the same moments in life. Our reality is based on remembering or forgetting our memories and experiences, but are we lying to ourselves so we can live in a reality we want?
Our memories shape us and our reality. In the short story, ‘All summer in a day’ by Ray Bradbury, Margot was the only child that could remember the sun. All the other children have forgotten what it felt like since they were born on Venus and the sun only appeared when they were two. Margot however, was born on earth and she stayed there until four. This enabled her to remember what the sun looked and felt like. The sun is in her reality which caused her to be isolated, excluded and outcasted because the other children wouldn’t accept her reality. Our memories also affect our perception of the world around us. There are people who had bad memories of their school life because of some drama that might’ve happened. This could lead to a strong dislike towards school because their reality is now emphasised on how school is just drama that affects their social status. All the good memories could be filtered out and that would shape their own reality. Our memories shape our reality because we can choose to remember and forget things, but it is through our experiences that we gain these memories.
The experiences we have in life create our memory and shapes our reality. Margot had experienced the sun when she was four,

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    Fifth Business

    • 1205 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Our childhood plays a significant role in defining the kind of person that we become and the type of life that we live.…

    • 1205 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Memories are known as the mental faculty of retaining and recalling past experiences. In her article, Memories of Thing s Unseen, Elizabeth Loftus proves that memory can be very faulty at times and not only can memories be changed, but false memories can be planted into the mind. In addition, she also explains the characteristics and consequences of false memories and discusses the role of imagination inflation.…

    • 891 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Learning to deal with, and share the memories from a lifetime ago is important. “The communities of memory that tie us to past also turn us toward the future as communities of hope,”2 Bellah explains. By remembering the past we see the pain, the misfortune, the danger, and the list could go on and on; but we also see hope for a better tomorrow. Recalling the bad, while looking at a problem facing the present, reminds us we are stronger than we think. Just as the communities each of us live in faced hardship to get to the place they are now, they will face even more, but are stronger now than they were at the beginning. This is because, “… collective memory is a source of social strength.”3 The strength of the nation, city,…

    • 676 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Humans can come to a state of realisation through the fact that memory can be something that is possible to be flaw. An individual’s current emotions, opinions or understanding on their past experienced event can influence them to change their memory of that event, thus re-writing the history of their personal lives. This same fault can also coincide with the flaws that occur in the documentary evidence of history, which influences memory.…

    • 534 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The very essence of childhood is never forgotten. A memory, a scent, a certain feeling will never be lost in time, as the child transforms from the younger years of bliss to an older life of enduring hardships and burdens. Yet with his aging, memories are still alive in everyone. Many of the memories etched in the brain forever are caused by a parent or parents in the way they choose to raise their young sometimes creating a negative memory and also creating very positive, pleasant memories. Torn between the beliefs of two parents, Zora Neale Hurston is able to show both sides of childhood memories in her autobiography. Through diction and manipulation of point of view, Zora Neale Hurston conveys not only a plentiful and satisfying childhood within the bounds of her own childhood but also a sense of a childhood restricted by fears of the outside worlds and the fears that was apart of it.…

    • 704 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Many researches believe that memory repression is extremely rare and that recovered memories from childhood should not be given credibility unless they are corroborated by any for of other evidence. (Lynn & McConkey). With numerous studies done over the past years on repressed memories, even if it is possible to stir up the repressed memories of childhood, the results of these studies is that researchers believe that most repressed memories are not related the events in question. (Loftus)…

    • 696 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Memory is such an intricate part of our brain. Memory allows us to learn, recall, and store important life events. Memory is “the mental capacity or faculty of retaining and reviving facts, events, impressions, etc., or of recalling or recognizing previous experiences.” (Dictionary) Memory holds valuable information that has made an impression in some way or another. Just like our mind, memory is composed of multiple systems. The 4 most common systems are declarative, episodic, procedural and mental imagery. Episodic memory is memory from personal experiences, or memory that we see from our own point of view. Declarative is memory of facts, stuff that is true. This system is particular used for school, to remember items needed for tests, papers, etc. Procedural Memory is how we do things, like remembering how to cook or how to get somewhere. And finally, mental imagery, which I remember how things looked, like the shirt I wore yesterday was…

    • 522 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Descartes Vs Dillard

    • 737 Words
    • 3 Pages

    We as humans are extraordinary beings; we’ve created diseases, and cured them; we’ve built nuclear bombs, created civilizations, made hybrid species, and have managed to come up with laws that were to be followed by people while a higher authority were chosen to enforce them. Yet we can’t seem to figure out the truth behind reality, and how to distinguish what’s real and what’s fake. Are the things we imagine just mere figments of our imaginations, or are they things we’ve seen or experienced before? Is your mind the ultimate guide to happiness and truth, or is experiencing things for yourself the only way to find the true meaning of life? Or is living in a cave confined of your own ignorance your ideal way to live a happy life?…

    • 737 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Whose Reality Essay

    • 1035 Words
    • 3 Pages

    In the words of cognitive neuropsychologist Kaspar Meyer, “what is now clear is that the brain is not a stimulus-driven robot that directly translates the outer world into a conscious experience. What we’re conscious of is what the brain makes us be conscious of, and in the absence of incoming signals, bits of memories tucked away can be enough for a brain to get started with”. Reality for each individual differs according to their past experiences and memories, as well as what they choose to perceive to be true.…

    • 1035 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Belief Engine

    • 430 Words
    • 2 Pages

    We can not always believe our memories. The text explains that memories are subject to our current bias, and therefore misinterpretation. If we could take the time to thoroughly analyze all of our memories, those good and bad, we may find that what we thought to be true may ultimately be false and what we held to be false may be the turning point of our lives. This type of rhetoric is exactly why people shy away from critical thinking and put so much effort into the magical thinking that was taught to us at an early age. If we can’t believe out own past experiences, that what do we have to hold on too? That fear has held us hostage for…

    • 430 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    False Memory

    • 1171 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Memory is fallible and malleable that can be changed and created a new experience or information. This fabricated or distorted remembering of an event is called a false memory, however, never occurred in reality. Inaccurate information and erroneous attribution sources of an original information causes to recollect entirely false events. Also, the false memory can have profound implications that vivid and lively recollection of memory may reconstruct new memory. In addition, it can be created by poor understanding of the false memory that lead to terrible miscarriages of justice in legal system. The purpose of this research is to explore the effect of the false memory and the possibilities of its formation.…

    • 1171 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL MEMORY Outlines: 1. Definition, characteristics and function of autobiographical memory 2. Methods of studying autobiographical memory 3. Levels of autobiographical memory 4. Conway’s theory 5.…

    • 419 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Memory makes us who we are. According to How Human Memory Works, most people talk about their memory like a thing they have, but memory doesn’t exist like your body does. It’s more like a concept that refers to the process of remembering. Many scientists and researchers compare the human memory as a filing cabinet with memory folders or a supercomputer in the past, but now people say that the average human memory is a much more complex system; memory is said to be a brain-wide process, not just in a single part. A complex structure a single memory seems to be, because of the different parts. Think about an apple. You probably thought about the colors an apple can be, that an apple is a fruit, even how you eat an apple. Although there are many components of what you thought was a single memory, you probably won’t recognize where the different parts your apple memories are coming from, only the apple as a whole. Even scientists are only on square one with figuring out how the brain brings all the memories together into one whole mental image, graph, or chart.…

    • 432 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Nature of Reality

    • 1130 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Reality is what you want it to be. Reality is a term that is used loosely, but comes in many different variations. There has never been or never will be one way to interpret reality, as it is built up of beliefs and values which vary from person to person. The true nature of reality is merely an illusion; it is the universe which exists in the mind. George Orwell develops this idea in the novel 1984 as he suggests that the true nature of reality is not defined by its validity but an outcome of society’s influences, and the boundaries of reality are constructed by the boundaries of imagination.…

    • 1130 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In the book, “An Artist of the Floating World,” the author emphasizes the importance of memory. Ishiguro asks many fascinating questions and gives many answers on this idea. Some of the questions he asks are how do people remember the past. How do they revise it, as they go over events? Are our memories reliable? Can our memories give us an accurate picture of ourselves? All these questions and answers Ishiguro brings to our attention to show us the importance of memory.…

    • 694 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays

Related Topics