Everyone tends to edit their memories of lost loved ones or lost relationships, emphasizing the admirable qualities and good times, downplaying the unpleasant aspects. Early in our relationship, Rebecca and I experienced some friction when we discovered that we very vehemently remembered some experiences or discussions quite differently, so we were either having some sort of selective amnesia or we looked at things through quite different filters.
I was married once before, back when I was just 21, and it only lasted three years. It wasn’t much of a marriage, and we had little in common, but after several years of being alone, I began to view those memories through rose-colored glasses, forgetting the unhappy times, clinging to and even emphasizing some of the good parts. Maybe it wasn’t so bad after all … My discussions about that with Neil Peart partially inspired the song “Halo Effect” on the last Rush album, Clockwork Angels.
Do we willfully edit our memories, or is it just a defense mechanism? And if we could have our past the way we wanted to remember it, would we do it?