When you remember a scene from the past, you are not remembering the past. You are remembering a memory of the past. Your brain works in a very funny way where it does not record memories like film. Instead, it seems to remember things as a collage. Everytime you recall a memory – whether it be a happy memory of your first love, or a sad memory of lost love – your brain recalls your last recollection of the event. Simply put, every time you “remember” something, you are merely remembering the latest memory of the event. Each time you replay an event in your mind, it is rewriting a version of the memory over itself.
This means that the more you dwell on a memory, the more it is distorted. You romanticise the good parts and dramaticise the bad parts. The memory is ultimately warped beyond the point of telling the true story. Instead, it becomes something akin to a movie script or a fairy tale. But if it truly is a memory you deem special and hold dear, then maybe it isn’t too bad keeping a romanticised, “perfect” version of it somewhere in your heart to look back on every now and then.
