It occurred to me that this Halloween will be the last of its kind. For the past several years there has been a constant question mark about what to do for Halloween. Should we dress up and go to a party? Should we stay home and hand out candy to hapless children brave enough to venture towards our house? Maybe instead we should just scamper off into the darkness and be devils. That's this year. Next year though we will have a built-in reason to celebrate holidays in a different way. Granted the tiny little person we bring with us won't be capable of saying 'Trick or Treat', but I'm hoping that her inevitable cuteness dressed as something easily recognizable and yet vaguely ironic will prompt people to dish out candy with abandon.
Halloween is one of the few American holidays that really attempts to twist reality a bit. It's meant to be fun and feel just a little bit dangerous. For a kid it's a bit like a scary movie coming to life. Dress up as something else and go out in the world and ask for sugar door to door. Who knows if you're going to make it back in one piece or more importantly, who knows how many boxes of raisins you're going to get stuck with. I thought my days of dressing up and asking for candy were behind me, but now there is a chance to make a comeback! As an adult if you dress up and go trick or treating it's very likely that you're going to get yourself arrested or at least not given a full share of candy because everyone knows you have the ability to just go out and buy the candy yourself. As an adult if you dress up and go trick or treating in a combined costume with your child then at the very least you'll be entitled to 25% of said candy earnings throughout the evening in question.
I think the part that will be most interesting to me is trying to see the world through the eyes of someone who doesn't have my level of experience. I don't pretend to understand all the various aspects of this world and probably know only enough to be dangerous. I'm not the smartest guy in the room, but I'm also not the dumbest. That said, I feel like I have a pretty good grasp on some of the basics about what can exist and what can't. A child doesn't know that the goblin attempting to ensnare that hot girl in a bikini (what on Earth are they watching?) isn't real and is based on someone's imagination. The lines of reality and fiction are still being formed. What was a normal street in the morning is now something sinister in the evening because Halloween blurs the lines of reality ever so slightly. Someone changed the rules for one night. Never mind the fact that as parents we constantly try and warn our children about the dangers of strangers. Then on one night we say it's OK to not only interact with strangers, but to go house to house asking people we don't know for candy. It's the only holiday we celebrate where it's expected that you wander through your neighborhood relying on the good nature of your neighbors. The other major holidays are more focused on turning towards the people you already know and celebrating the season. For a child it's probably a strange paradigm that really speaks to the way we as a society has separated ourselves from each other. Or it's about the candy. Yeah it's probably about the candy.
Saturday, October 31, 2015
Thursday, October 29, 2015
On the Unreliable Narration of Our Minds
Where do our memories go when we're not remembering them? Somewhere within our minds are all these experiences and feelings that have occurred throughout our lives. We don't know how they get put there or how we get them out when we want them. Our very perception of reality is being monitored by a system we don't fully understand and have very little control over.
There have been several times in the last few years where someone I grew up with would reminisce with me about our shared past and I have no memory of the event. I have to take their word for it that it happened. And even more important, that it happened the way they remember it. It's a strange thing to have pieces of my own past that others remember and I don't. Granted there are whole chunks of my early childhood that I can't remember because I was way too young to retain those memories. Both of my parents may not remember those events either. Logically, I know that the event must have happened, but if something happens and no one can remember it, how do you know what is real? Maybe it falls into that same category as the soundless tree in the woods. What if I remember something one way and someone else remembers it differently? What is the truth? Is there a singular truth when it comes to memory? If I can't remember something then I have to rely on someone else's memory to tell me what happened and that's a tricky thing when we already know that memory can't be trusted, even when it bothers to show up.
Have you ever been reminded of something you hadn't thought of in a very long time? It could have been years since you heard a song or saw a person or thought of that birthday party where the clown caught on fire. Suddenly the memory comes flooding back to the forefront of your mind. Where did it come from? How do I know what I'm remembering is the 'real' event and not some cobbled together amalgamation of memory and imagination? It's very weird to think that today may not be remembered very well a year from now. Even though this moment now is so clear in your mind, we seem to have very little control over what items make it into our long term memory. How much of our experience just fades away into nothing?
Today's world may be different because we as a society are so much more focused on capturing the moment, even if the moment is us eating a bacon taco with our friends on a random Tuesday evening. I'm not saying selfies and other forms of self-narration are bad. It's just that I've already covered how things like Facebook are a highlight reel of your life events. It's not the real record of truth, even though the outside world may think you lead an amazing life because you spent three months traveling the world and have all these great pictures standing next to things you see in movies. No one else gets to remember all the non-picture-worthy moments except us.
When I lived alone it became easy to assume that my narration was the right one. There wasn't anyone around to tell me differently. You start to believe everything you think, which may not always be what really happened. Now that I live with someone, there is a constant second observer to the events. Granted there are many times where we both experience something and immediately disagree on what actually happened, which really causes one to question if the person they're talking to is in fact crazy. The even scary part is, what if they're not and it's you who just went through something and perceived it completely out of whack with reality? Having a partner with you is both a blessing and a curse because you're often forced to immediately look back at something that happened, but through different eyes. Does this second person change the memory that would have been formed? Are you both now remembering variations on single event? Given enough time how will you know if your version is even close to what happened?
There have been several times in the last few years where someone I grew up with would reminisce with me about our shared past and I have no memory of the event. I have to take their word for it that it happened. And even more important, that it happened the way they remember it. It's a strange thing to have pieces of my own past that others remember and I don't. Granted there are whole chunks of my early childhood that I can't remember because I was way too young to retain those memories. Both of my parents may not remember those events either. Logically, I know that the event must have happened, but if something happens and no one can remember it, how do you know what is real? Maybe it falls into that same category as the soundless tree in the woods. What if I remember something one way and someone else remembers it differently? What is the truth? Is there a singular truth when it comes to memory? If I can't remember something then I have to rely on someone else's memory to tell me what happened and that's a tricky thing when we already know that memory can't be trusted, even when it bothers to show up.
Have you ever been reminded of something you hadn't thought of in a very long time? It could have been years since you heard a song or saw a person or thought of that birthday party where the clown caught on fire. Suddenly the memory comes flooding back to the forefront of your mind. Where did it come from? How do I know what I'm remembering is the 'real' event and not some cobbled together amalgamation of memory and imagination? It's very weird to think that today may not be remembered very well a year from now. Even though this moment now is so clear in your mind, we seem to have very little control over what items make it into our long term memory. How much of our experience just fades away into nothing?
Today's world may be different because we as a society are so much more focused on capturing the moment, even if the moment is us eating a bacon taco with our friends on a random Tuesday evening. I'm not saying selfies and other forms of self-narration are bad. It's just that I've already covered how things like Facebook are a highlight reel of your life events. It's not the real record of truth, even though the outside world may think you lead an amazing life because you spent three months traveling the world and have all these great pictures standing next to things you see in movies. No one else gets to remember all the non-picture-worthy moments except us.
When I lived alone it became easy to assume that my narration was the right one. There wasn't anyone around to tell me differently. You start to believe everything you think, which may not always be what really happened. Now that I live with someone, there is a constant second observer to the events. Granted there are many times where we both experience something and immediately disagree on what actually happened, which really causes one to question if the person they're talking to is in fact crazy. The even scary part is, what if they're not and it's you who just went through something and perceived it completely out of whack with reality? Having a partner with you is both a blessing and a curse because you're often forced to immediately look back at something that happened, but through different eyes. Does this second person change the memory that would have been formed? Are you both now remembering variations on single event? Given enough time how will you know if your version is even close to what happened?
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