On Memory

I once learned (Torah Umesorah - Rabbi Chaim Feuerman) that the capacity of long term memory is almost unlimited. Before I'd heard that I had a fear of running out of room. I don't think this is related to intelligence, I think it has to do with how strongly you experience an event.

Rabbi Moshe Feinstein was once asked how he remembered everything he learned. He said that learning for him was an experience and just like you remember what you experience so too if you experience what you learn you remember it. Some people don't remember their experiences, so Rav Moshe's analogy doesn't work for them. I wish that I experienced all that I learned strongly enough to remember it, but I don't. That's a topic for another time. What's on my mind and fingertips presently is the way that I remember parts of my life because I experienced them strongly at the time.

There's a scene in The Book of Lights in which one of the protagonists quotes back something the other one said (I don't recall if it was Gershon to Arthur or the reverse). The response he gets is something like, "wow, you have such a great memory." In building up to this moment Chaim Potock did a great job of making it clear that this person remembered this because he experienced it so strongly at the time. When I read this (before I had heard the Rav Moshe quote from Rabbi Herschel Schachter in his home after Megilla reading, circa 1991) I had an epiphany. People sometimes comment about my memory, but I realize it's related to the way I take things in. The way I process my experiences, which often leads to my remembering them, is at best a double edged sword.

The type of "memory" that I'm talking about is a certain style of memory and of learning. I believe the technical term here would be kinesthetic. While some learn by hearing and others by seeing, a third group learns by experiencing. As a kid I read The Memory Book by Frank Lorayne and Jerry Lucas. I borrowed the small yellow paperback from my brother and took it with me on my first trip to Israel. I remember parts of the book to this day. But I don't think it's because of the techniques included in the book (great as they are) that I remember the book. I remember that book because of the context of the experience that it was a part of.