Thoughts, talk and the written word

Our own personal reality reflects and influences our thoughts. There is continuous flow in between the sensory information we get from our body and our environment and the processing of this information.
Like I mentioned in my last blog, we perceive not all in the same way, we interpret according to our learning experience, we evaluate the consequences and act upon the result and our memory stores the information.
According to our personality we will prefer to ponder on consequences and actions ourselves or we will refer to outside sources to check upon consequences and actions- we prefer to have the reactions and advices of others.
I like to keep things for myself, or I like to share a problem. That means that our inner thoughts and emotions either turn in our heads or are voiced out.

Thoughts and speak will then be fixed in the memory- or will they?
Try to remember the last for you important talk you have had with somebody. You will probably be able to recall your principal arguments about what was important and the general reaction of the other side… but do you remember every word? Maybe there were important parts that you didn’t notice as important and therefore didn’t store in your memory.
But today, there are other parts that have grown in importance and suddenly you remember those much more clearly than the rest that has been said.
Did you ever have somebody being mad at you for something you supposedly said and you don’t have a clue what he is talking about? Obviously it wasn’t important to you but it touched a sensitive point in the other and its importance grew in time and now that is about the only thing he remembers.
Family feuds and important conflicts can be constructed on selective and transformative memories that are solidified in the shape of a myth- in the end nobody knows the real story anymore.

The same thing happens when we ponder in thought, the more days go by, the more our memory about past reflections transforms: certain aspects are enhanced, others are diminished. Small events are being blown up according to what fits into our actual state of mind.
If I am convinced that my colleague is stupid I will clearly remember all his mistakes and when he made a fool of himself, but somehow the events where he helped me on a file or where he had a vital information to give are reduced to minor hazard in y memory.

Speech and thought are therefore unreliable sources for generating accurate memories- that is why some cultures prefer the written word. But even writing doesn’t protect from misinterpretation in later times. According to our environment we tend to interpret a text.
A word can have a different meaning in different contexts and cultures. The right definition of words is one of the obsessions of law.
A lot of sacred texts are today understood like a news report- as relating facts. At the time they were written, symbols were important, not facts. We live in a world based on facts so we will look our and interpret information as facts.

Still, concerning our own life-span and culture the written word seems to be quite reliable as source of memory about history. Historians basically work with written or recorded material.

We can use this reliability of writing for ourselves. Instead of brooding on our evaluations of informations, actions to take and on our emotions, we can write them down. When we write them down, we can look at them- today, tomorrow, in a month. Our attitude may have changed then, but our mind can’t cheat us: that is what we thought. An outside memory of our inner states of mind.