Planning Life

“What are you planning on doing this summer?”
“What are you planning on doing after you’re done you’re undergrad degree?”

These are questions many university students such as I get quite often. Later on in my life perhaps I’ll get questions like such

“Where are thinking of living?”

…and maybe even one day..

“When are you both planning on having kids?”

We like to plan. If plan A doesn’t work, well there’s plan B and so on. Not all plans turn out the way we want it though. I find sometimes when things don’t work out, that’s maybe what keeps us bitter. When things end or when things don’t work out, it’s upsetting to think about how our plans failed.

Yet I can guarantee you that it’s almost inevitable for us to go back to planning yet again afterward. (I know some people are not like this…maybe a lot of people are not like this actually)

Ok so sometimes plans do work. I just want to raise in this post that sometimes they don’t work and when that comes to our realization it hits us hard.

If I look at my life, well I was ripped of someone so early and there went all my plans. The things I had planned on asking help, advice, it all went crashing down that early morning. At that moment I loss a role model, so many “clichés” that life was supposed to assign me and so so much more...

Even friendships and relationships, we plan an ideal in our minds and it sometimes it doesn’t turn out the way we want it. Friends may back stab, you may hurt a friend or make a mistake that ends a relationship, someone might not feel the same way about you, etc.

Actually, I was just watching an Indian movie where two people’s plans of being together, getting married, having a family is all halted and shattered. Why? …Well the man had a terminal heart condition. He was dying…and eventually dies at the end.

Why is it then that we keep planning? Maybe we plan to be safe, in terms of career paths, financial planning, etc. Planning like such I can understand.

But what boggles my mind is how we keep planning the different facets of our lives when we keep getting disappointed. I wonder if there’s a social psychology theory that would explain why individuals have a need to plan. I’m still searching.

Memories: The Difference Between You and I

What defines us each as individuals? In my summer class, my professor had said memories are what defined a person. I find that her statement bares certain truth. Our experiences and how we remember them are what separates from us all from each other.

As I was reading today, for my test (which I have an incredible amount more to do and should be doing instead of this), I realized life without memory almost strips a person of his or her identity. As many people often complain about past problems and loath the fact that they remember them, those remembered words, situations, settings and emotions are forever part of who we are today. Of course, good memories well we all like to keep, such as realxing and fun trips, great and unforgetable encounters, unexpected perfect kisses, etc.

As a person who has lost people of great importance in the past. I can tell you that memories become treasures. However, the ability to keep memories to a certain degree or form new ones should actually be a treasure for everyone.

Not remembering the past means not knowing who you are. Not being able to remember current events, in others words not being able to form new memories allocate you nothing but to be stuck in time. You have no future, no past, you live only in the present and the second your attention shifts; you are in a new present. This is actually the case of a man who after suffering from an infection that damaged his brain, specifically parts of the temporal lobe and the hippocampal area (I’m not sure, but it’s what I believe remembering after watching this movie in class).

He would write in his diary. When a family member or a caretaker would take the diary and read it, all you would see is: “I am now for the first time fully conscious”, written many times and scribbled over. He was unable to form new declarative memories.

It is true that experiences shape who we are as person. Nevertheless, we should not neglect the fact that the way we remember these experiences plays a great role as well. You and I can live and even go through some same sets of events. Yet, we each might remember the events differently and allocate a different meaning to these remembered memories.

Random interesting fact about memories:
People usually remember music, movies, politicians and almost everything else from their adolescence and young adulthood better than they remember similar items from later in life. Events from ages 10 to 30 are sometimes called the "autobiographical memory bump". (Berntsen & Rubin, 2002)