How to Travel in your Mind

There is a huge emphasis on having new experiences; but very little emphasis on revisiting them in memory. We would be wiser (and happier) if we learnt to travel more concertedly around the good memories we already have.

FURTHER READING

“Throughout our lives, we spend a lot of time and even more money engineering pleasant experiences. We book airline tickets, visit beaches, admire glaciers, say hello to penguins, watch elephants drinking and so on…”

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CREDITS

Produced in collaboration with:

Tomas Pichardo Espaillat

[Breathlless]

People are so absorbed in recording the experience that they aren't really present to enjoy the moment

[devtogoru]

nostalgia. the thing that keeps me awake at night

[GodWorksOut]

I live in the past just as much as I live in the present. There is so much to learn, feel, and even experience. By reexamining memories you have, you may discover something you weren't cognizant of before. In fact, it's even better if you write about it. <3

[PogieJoe]

This show is always so beautifully animated.

[SunlessDawn]

Thank you for standing up for our memories because all too often, "living in the past" has a very negative connotation.

[potallegta]

The problem with this is sometimes you can't just simply control your mind to think only of the good memories, when left alone your mind usually tend to relive the worst kind of memories.

[bolivar]

1. " We are what we remember" says Eric Kandel. But Gabriel Garcia Marquez says it even better:

" Life is not what you lived, but what you remember and how you remember it in order to tell it".

( At the beginning of his autobiography " Living to Tell The Tale" )

And I think how we remember it and how we tell it, has a lot to do with our capacity to express ourselves.

Wittgenstein says:

" All I know is what I have words for".

So, on occasions where we can't quite find the words to describe what is happening to us or how we feel, we miss something about those moments...


But here is hope: if we keep educating ourselves and re-visit those remembrances from time to time, we can find new meanings in them, and we can understand them better. We can learn new things from the very same past!

Then what Kierkegaard said really makes sense:

"Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards"

2. This reminds me of Michael Jordan! On an interview I have heard that he sees "patterns" when he plays. So he sees where every player stands in that moment and where the balls is, and he intuitively recognises a pattern he knows and reacts accordingly to get the ball!
I thought this was so fascinating and may be we could have this as a metaphor when we look back at our lives. So going back to old memories would not only honour those memories, but it could also make us " recognise" a patterns among those memories. ( This tends to happen a lot around relationships) So in this case, our past would help us to gain a little more control over our future.

3. There is a very scary poem by Charles Baudelaire, called "The Clock". But I like it! That's where he says:

"Minutes, blithesome mortal, are bits of ore
That you must not release without extracting the gold!"

So if we could not extract the gold in that moment for some reason, we can still go back and try again!


4. Here is a great line to remember, both for our past and future experiences. Rainer Maria Rilke says:

" ...For believe me, the more one is, the richer is all that one experiences".

So our goal should be to become wiser, more sensitive and more profound, so that everything we experience can also become more meaningful.

5. There is an incredible, unforgettable " Radiolab podcast" on this issue. The episode is called
" Memory and Forgetting".

6. Now this may sound a bit too technical, but I have been reading this book by Christiane Stenger, who was a former " World Memory Champion". These people are called" Memory Athletes". I am not very interested in memorising numbers and cards etc., but what they are able to do is really fascinating and they say that everybody can learn it.

So it would be great if could make some more " space" in our minds, for our memories, using some of those techniques. She recommends the following websites, where you can find exercises to train this capacity:

Neuronation
Memorado
Mybraintraining


7. On a podcast by Paul Holdengräber, Elisabeth Gilbert said something very inspiring:
so she has this huge jar and everyday she writes on a paper "the most beautiful moment of the day" and she throws the paper in the jar.
It is a great idea to save at least "one valuable moment" from that "one day of life" which is quite something!

8. And we must look back at our lives definitely with CURIOSITY! I have found the following lines in a book I liked a lot.

" Re-igniting your innate human curiosity is a wonderful way of dealing skilfully with the frantic world in which we so often live. You'll soon discover that although you feel time-poor, you are actually MOMENT-RICH. "

( From " Mindfulness" by Mark Williams)

9. Friends who speak Spanish, you should listen to that wonderful song " Volver a los diecisiete " by Violetta Parra! There is an amazing version with Chico, Cateano, Gal Costa and Mercedes Sosa. That's the song that says:

" ...y hasta la dura cadena con que nos ata el destino
es como un dia bendecido que alumbra mi alma serena"...

[HoangNguyen-sybe]

I've rewatched an old film series I really liked when i was young. And the feelings were the same as when i was a kid. such a fun experience

[phocian]

As I have gotten older, I find doing this to be a great pleasure. Whether in the middle of the day at work or at night just before falling asleep, I may travel back to a vacation I went on or just travel back to a pleasurable conversation I had with someone. If I am not able to travel as much in the future, I still have my beautiful thoughts.

[carolowens]

I recently took out old and new pictures of people, events, etc., of my life and have tacked them to one whole wall in my room. So many memories have come back, good and not so good but were part of my life. I am 78 now and so glad I have done this and will continue to entertain myself with the stories and people of all these years. It's great! Carol

[kevincabral]

This channel is therapy to me. Thank you for your work.

[cimmik]

Most often, I don't want to experience my memories again, because I regret something I did or didn't do. That's why my camera of my mind, which you explains the video, is so wonderful. I can edit my memories, and then revisit them, where I imagine the perfect outcome.
Thank you for this video :)

[chronic_johnson_a.r.a.b]

Absolutely. Memories are one of the most important things for me

[Chotabear]

Actually, we do think about nice memories quite frequently - it's called nostalgia and our memories seem to have some sort of defence mechanism because the past always seems so much more beautiful than the present. It's as though bad memories of the past get filtered out or repressed and that is probably why the past seems so wonderful to most people.

[gavinleonard]

I very much appreciated Alain's voiceover WITHOUT the overwhelming background music/effects that interfere in other TSOL videos. Simple, beautiful, effective. Thank you!

[davidgifford]

There is a downside of this. The time you dedicate to dwelling on the past is time in which you miss out on the present. Nostalgia with the price of not living in the moment.

[Shimamon]

I have no memory in my life, nor any experience in my life, that can surpass my imagination.

Life isn't interesting to me... My own inner concepts, let alone, the realms of others, are the only things that feel vivid and full of life for me.

I never had a need to go out and experience something, for, my entertainment was, by default, from within.

I need very little by this... But, it also drains me of motivation to actually do anything... Because, whatever I'll come up on the inside, will be far more profound than anything I'll ever encounter from without... And I've placed this under examination and test, and indeed...
I prefer my own dreams over this world.

Whatever I feel here, seems to always pale next to what I can get from the inside.

So, I have no need to reevaluate my own memories...
I can invent new ones without even moving.

[imsomanley]

"I need to go to my mind palace."

[OKCShiningOn]

from 2017 to today amazing help, grace and growth!!

[gabriellacatalini]

Lovely video, this very morning I was talking with a very dear person about looking back with pleasure, now that we are older, and this video is exactly what I was trying to express, once the dictates of youthful 'doing' have been obeyed, how lovely to look back with ease and pleasure...