Have you ever found yourself caged in the prison of memory?
I know I sure have …
In this episode of the Magnetic Memory Method Podcast, I'm not talking about being trapped in a Memory Palace or anything about memory techniques.
I'm talking about how memory can hold you back and keep you down. Like when it leads to avoiding doing new things because someone you know frowned upon it. Or you hold on to a unwanted behaviour because you can't shake the memories surrounding how you learned it.
A myriad of consequences result. These include avoiding new experiences. Treating others poorly because your parents burned certain responses in your mind. Repeating destructive behaviors. Yes, memory can be a terrible jailor.
The Good News Is That There Are Ways To Break Free
In case you're foggy on what I'm getting at, let me tell you a story about a friend of mine. Sadly, he died a few years ago from cancer.
And I miss him. He had a fierce personality, incredible intelligence and acidic wit that that burned impressions into your mind.
Although the cancer killed him, these aspects of his personality went untouched until almost the end. The disease got into his brain and then the friend I had known for so long was suddenly no more. It is a strange thing to wait for a body to die after the person him or herself is already gone.
"The life of the dead is placed in the memory of the living." – Marcus Tullius CiceroBut that's the power of memory.
Because even though my friend was gone, one thing stuck with me. It shaped my behavior, and although "prison" is perhaps too strong a word, these remembered things helped me act as my own jailor.
During my friend's long and valiant period of chemotherapy, I had finished a research and teaching grant in Film Studies. I had moved back to Canada from Germany and had no idea and struggled with finding a new teaching gig.
I had three promising interviews at universities, and was almost hired at one of them. But when that didn't pan out, I was lost. I didn't know what to do.
Even through all his pain and suffering, my friend held fast to his conviction that I was a teacher. We'd gotten our BA degrees together. I had watched him go through law school and start a practice as he watched me soar to the heights of a PhD and major research grant.
And although I couldn't offer a solution for his cancer, he tried to help me during his darkest days. Together, we came up together with the idea of getting a teaching certificate for high school. I rejected it the second I said it, but he encouraged it.
More than encourage it, it sometimes seemed that he lived through my experiences. We talked so much and had been so close for so many years that it was often as if I was not acting alone. So as I accepted the idea and made preparations for going back to school, it became more about him than me.
If You Have To Lower Your Standards, You're In The Wrong Place
Eating on the remaining funds from my research grant while housesitting to get by, I volunteered in local high schools.
Not because I wanted to volunteer, but because you need to teach under observation on a voluntary basis in a high school to apply for a teaching certificate in Canada. Even though I had taught at universities for years, I still needed to get the proper letters of recommendation from high school level teachers. Otherwise, I could not apply for the education program at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver. These were strange experiences because I was expected to treat the young students far below their obvious abilities.
Whereas I had been used to challenging university students to stretch beyond their comfort zones, I was now
Published on 10 years, 8 months ago
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