The Implications of Positive Memory

The Pollyanna Principle - people remember positive things more readily than negative things

I first learned this in a psych class in college and it has remained in my consciousness ever since, due to its ever-prevalence in my life.

Going hand in hand with forgive and forget, the Pollyanna Principle is what allows you to selectively remember the good parts of things, and simply overlook the bad in memories. You can remember laying on the couch with him and what movie you watched, or every detail about the night when he first told you that he loved you. Five years later you will still remember what you both wore to that baseball game, but you have to stretch your memory to recall the "bad stuff."

Your brain doesn't want you thinking about how much you cried when you found out that he cheated on you, or how much it hurt when you saw him out with another girl immediately after you broke up. It's too hard for your brain to process those thoughts years later, so everything is seen through rose-colored glasses.

I worked an event yesterday at a college basketball game, and immediately felt a twinge, missing working in sports. I remembered the energy of a game-day, and having that excitement every day at work. I love my job - it is hands down the best job that I have ever had, and I do know that. But there is always a part of me that is going to remember my days in baseball through rose-colored glasses - the excitement of working opening day, and the constant energy and movement. That part of me has to struggle to remember exactly how it felt never having a day off, never having enough money to make ends meet, and always thinking that stopping to breathe would be the start of the end.

The Pollyanna Principle protects us - it allows us to more easily remember what was good about a person or a particular situation. Just the same, there is a benefit to tempering your most romanticized thoughts with a dose of reality to remember why things turned out the way they did.

24 Hours

I was home sick yesterday. The majority of my day was spent either in bed or on the couch; I watched a movie and two television shows. I can't remember the last time I watched over three hours of concurrent television.

I awoke this morning to grey skies, damp cold, and wind outside my apartment that sounded like the world was ending. Part of me was determined to stay in bed, to shut out the world. After all, what is there to do on a day like today, other than to repeat the uselessness of the day before?

I got out of bed. I ate breakfast and took a shower. I was momentarily sidetracked by an absolutely horrid episode of "Beverly Hills 90210" (the early years) on Soapnet, but after fifteen minutes of humor, got my day back on track.

After months of excuses, I finally got a library card and took out four books. I took one of the books next door to Starbucks and read the first fifty pages with a venti white mocha in hand, stopping only for the occasional people watching experience. I ran errands. I went to five o'clock mass - the first time I've attended church since Easter.

I've felt very ungrounded lately, which is strange, since I've been making mostly decent decisions. Usually I recognize feeling ungrounded when I make a really off-kilter decision; but, as I said, lately I've been making mostly "ok" decisions for myself.

I took a book out of the library today that I have picked up numerous times in the bookstore, but have never bought - Saturday, by Ian McEwan. I've never read anything written by him, but always felt compelled to do so.

Saturday is a heavy read, mostly because McEwan does not write in a very plot driven fashion - he expends pages on descriptions in colorful language, which I often find myself skimming through in other books I read. It's not a book which I had difficulty putting down, but I also would be remiss to say that it's not worth reading. I get the feeling that when I finally finish it. I will view it more as an experience, than as a book that was necessarily "fun."

There were two sections that resonated with me. One reads as follows:
"On a recent Sunday evening Theo came up with an aphorism: the bigger you think, the crappier it looks. Asked to explain he said, 'When we go on about the big things, the political situation, global warming, world poverty, it all looks terrible, with nothing getting better, nothing to look forward to. But when I think small, closer in - you know, a girl I've just met, or this song we're going to do with Chas, or snowboarding next month, then it looks great. So this is going to be my motto - think small."

Another part of the book that I loved was not a section, but rather a quote - "Happiness seemed like a betrayal of principle, but happiness was unavoidable."

At times, happiness feels shallow; it lacks the depth that sadness inevitably does. Your thoughts, when happy, seem shorter and less significant. However, when you're unhappy, you tend to think more, think deeper. When you are happy, you tend to "think small," yet when you're unhappy, you see a bigger picture. More things to fear, more things to worry about, more things to generally feel unhappy about.

While I appreciate the value of deep thought, of evaluating my emotions, sometimes there is a benefit in "thinking small," and not viewing it as a betrayal of principle.

I need to find the balance between being happy and feeling grounded, to find the place where happiness and feeling strong coincide. I need to be a better version of myself, and to feel comfortable in doing so. It's easy to fall into a trap of over self-examination, to not want to get out of bed on a gray, cold, rainy day ... but there is so much of the world outside that is worth experiencing, for better or for worse.