Funny things, memories.  As individuals, we're constantly taking in all sorts of new information as we work our way forward on life's highway. Some things make enough of an impression on us that we intentionally put them into our "long-term memory" bank. Most things, though, seem to simply fade into the rearview mirror as we travel forward. The farther we travel, the more of those things simply disappear into oblivion, right?  We simply forget.  Or do we?

Here's Lesson #3 from Chapter 1 in From Start to Finish.  There are sixty-five of these lessons integrated throughout the book, but in this one I share a story about my grandfather that forever reshaped my understanding regarding how our memories work.  

Lesson 3: Do We Ever Really Forget?

Somewhere around the time I finished college and had returned home for the weekend, Grandma had already passed, and Grandpa was hospitalized with some serious health problems. Several of us were taking turns staying with him. I remember it was midday in the summer with a bright, full sun outside. But inside that hospital room, the room-darkening blinds were closed, and the AC was on high, so it was very dark and very chilly to any visitor.

I’m guessing the morphine he was on had something to do with what happened next, but while Grandpa was sound asleep, he began talking out loud. And it was about the War. I quickly figured out he wasn’t awake, but since I was the only one there, it also seemed sort of wrong not to engage in the conversation, and I was obviously curious to learn more about his past. As he continued to talk, it became increasingly clear that he was nowhere near that hospital room but was instead on a WWI battlefield somewhere in France around 1917.

What happened next I've shared with many a class over the years. Grandpa began to describe in painstakingly accurate detail what was happening around him. Once I sorted out what was going on, I began to quiz him on increasingly specific details. 

There was no question I could ask (down to the very buttons on a soldiers’ uniform) that he could not answer with complete confidence and apparent accuracy. He described each soldier as they walked by, what each looked like and what they were wearing. He talked about how hot it was sitting out in the full sun and how hard and uncomfortable the soldier’s shrapnel helmet was that he was sitting on.

That experience forever altered my beliefs about how our memories work. Previously, I had assumed that at some point, memories simply disappeared and were gone. Since then, I am now more inclined to believe that everything we experience is all still in there somewhere. Maybe we forget in some instances how to recall it, but it’s all still in there.

Backing up this conclusion is that in extreme demonstrations of this memory feature, a very rare form of “perfect memory” called Hyperthymesia, or highly superior autobiographical memory (HSAM), can exist in some individuals. It causes people to remember with great accuracy almost everything that’s ever happened in their lives. At one point, only sixty-one people worldwide, including actress Marilu Henner from the Taxi television series, had been documented with the condition.

I often shared Grandpa’s story with my marketing students when we were studying how consumer memories work. It’s typically a part of the course that really makes them think about their own memories. One of the things many of them begin to consider for the first time is that if everything we learn is all still in there permanently, maybe we should be more discerning about what we put into our minds when given the choice!