The earliest happy memory and sad memory - Essay Example

The author of the article explores the earliest happy memory is of being taken to the zoo by his uncle in his brand new automobile. He think he must has been about three or four years old, but he remembers very clearly sitting with his Aunt in the back of the car, and being excited about going on a trip without his parents for the first time. His uncle was a very charismatic character and the author remembers that he used to smoke expensive cigars that were individually wrapped and came in wooden boxes.

In fact the researcher still has one of the wooden cigar boxes that his uncle gave him, and it retains a faint smell of these cigars to this day. The researcher’s earliest sad memory is not difficult to remember because it arises out of a traumatic occurrence in his family when he was about three or four years old. It was winter time and his mother became suddenly very ill and was taken to hospital. He remember going to his grandparents’ house and having to sleep in a strange bed. His father was not around for most of that time and he did not understand what was going on.

His single worst memory is seeing his father crying, and his grandmother looking after him as if he was a baby. This is a kind of flashbulb memory for him, because it suddenly revealed a dimension of life that he had not imagined before. The author had always assumed that his home would be secure, and his parents would be in control of things, and always around to care for him. me. Even now I am uncomfortable when I see grown adults cry, and I think it is because this first experience was such a painful one for me.

Of the two memories, the sad memory is by far the most vivid. The zoo trip is one that I rarely think of, and though I have enjoyed retrieving it from storage for this exercise, I do not think it has had a major impact on my life. I have a fondness for animals, and this trip may have helped to reinforce that inclination, but apart from that, this memory is like a happy glow in the distant past. It has become part of the background to my life, and I take it for granted, along with many other happy memories from childhood.

The memory of my father weeping, however, is one that I do regularly think about. At the time it was a very distressing experience, and I know now that the mind tends to hold on to such memories, even though they are difficult, because they have a useful function in terms of survival and knowledge building. Young children learn from situations which make them sad or frightened, so long as the experience is not completely overwhelming. They retain some images as iconic memories, which persist for many years.

In some cases, if the experience is very shocking, then a child can repress past memories and this can affect future learning and the whole personality of the child. In my own case, the situation resolved itself after a couple of weeks, and my family life was restored to its usual calm normality, and so the sad memory of my father’s distress, though upsetting for me at the time, has not had catastrophic long term