I attended the session last week, so I am a little bit late at putting down my thoughts and ideas that were triggered on the day...this is a memory of the experience so forgive me if it is not completely correct, but I do hope to share as much as I can.
The statement about a memory of the experience is probably the first thing that I took from the day of the session and have been mulling over it for the past few days.
We watched a video of Daniel Kahneman talking about "happiness"...The Riddle of experience vs. memory.
'The second trap is the confusion between an experience and memory. Basically it is being happy in your life and being happy with your life. These are two very different concepts...The third trap is the focusing illusion, and it's the unfortunate fact that we can't think of any circumstance that affects well being without distorting it's importance...'
This video triggered off a discussion of our opinions on experience vs. memory and times when we could relate to this.
Kahneman went on to say about a man who had been listening to a symphony which he found to be glorious..but as he listened he got to the end and he found it to be dreadful and he said that it ruined the whole experience for him. Kahleman explains....'it hadn't ruined the experience for him. But it had ruined the memory of the experience. He'd had the experience, he'd had 20 minutes of glorious music. They counted for nothing! Because he was left with the memory. The Memory was ruined. And that was all he had left.'
This last statement really got me thinking. How many times I have said just that...the whole experience was ruined! I don't know why it's never clicked with me before...it's really obvious when you stop to look and think about it. Of course, I still had the good pieces of the experience. The bad pieces do not suddenly delete the good.
I do think it can work in a different way also. Instead of deleting the good, we often can look back on experiences with tinted glasses. Everything appears rosy and perfect...because a part of our mind has thrown away the bad experiences and only remembers the good.
In February, my partner and I stayed at a castle for the night on my birthday. We had stayed before and it had been really lovely so we decided to revisit. It was still a really enjoyable visit but I remember saying...'It wasn't as good as the first time.' I have said this on many occasion when I have revisited a favourite place.
But thinking about it after listening and reflecting on Kahneman's talk...this isn't true. Obviously somethings may have been better the first time, certain things may have happened for it to stand out to me, but I see now...it is memory that changes the first experience. The memory of my experience is difficult competition for a real, present experience.
It would be interesting to see how I would feel if I could swap the experiences around. If I could wipe the memory of the first experience, go through the second experience as the first experience and then the first experience after. Would I think my original first experience the better one? I doubt it.
We still have an experience even without the memories (photos, mind memory), but it's the memories we construct that remain where as experiences disappear.
After the video, we discussed various topics Kahneman mentioned which led us on to the art of reflection.
A few ideas I got from the discussion:
Reflection should not be an emotional way of thinking, of how we felt at that time, but instead should be an account of facts, of reasons why and how we responded or should have responded.
Letting feelings and emotions make our judgement is not a fare and reasonable analysis, instead it becomes more of a personal view. We should be looking at it from an outward perspective as if we are not involved.
When writing the journal a good way to do this would be through the style of another view.
One last point that has stood out to me since starting this course and seeing how we learn - Do I just investigate, take on board and remember topics that interests me?
What captures my attention is usually something I can relate to or that interests me. This I can expand upon and learn from and then hopefully move onto things I wouldn't have necessarily been interested in learning before.
Is this the natural way of learning? Is this how most people learn? How can I go about making the things I am not so interested in stick? Are there things I am missing and not taking on board? As I am always going through the doors that are unlocked (things that interest me) and just ignoring the locked doors (things that don't interest me), hoping that there may be another way to get to them through the unlocked ones.
All these points have certainly helped me to get started on my journal. Reflecting over these ideas have made me very much aware of the true value they hold.
These points were something that I already did know as scrambled thoughts, but it took Kahleman's video and our discussion to actually become aware of them and build sense onto them.
I had the pieces but now they have clicked together to form the jigsaw.
No comments:
Post a Comment