I recently read an article in Mind This Magazine by Ilya Yefremov that referenced Nobel-laureate psychologist Daniel Kahneman’s TED Talk, in which he talked about how the mind is divided into the “experiencing self” and the “remembering self,” where the experiencing self “perceives the world in the immediacy of the moment” and the remembering self “reflects on the moments that have passed and constructs a narrative which serves as the basis for our memories.” Yefremov adopts this framework and asks, “Is it not almost better to focus on the more lasting world – the world of the remembering self – a world which we can affect?”
I found her advocation for the remembering self striking, because the common argument in the modern day seems to be for the experiencing self. We always hear “be more present.” And for good reason. We spend a lot of time behind our screens, and even when we’re out experiencing things, we feel this urge to document everything, whether for social media or otherwise, so we pull out a screen and snap some shots.
But perhaps the experiencing self and the remembering self don’t need to be at odds with each other. Yes, be present. But that doesn’t mean we need to devalue the remembering self in order to do so. In fact, the remembering self is what this virtual space is all about. It’s why I started blogging. And so, even though it’s March, I am writing this for my remembering self. When I look back on it, perhaps at the end of 2018, it won’t matter that I posted in March rather than January, but it will matter that I posted at all.
