While reading an essay, I notice this. Relevant to something in the essay, I recall a similar experience I had also had. But then I notice this. I had mentioned this experience in an email to someone. Writing that thought had created an indexed entry in my brain. Had I not typed that out, my brain could not have indexed that.

Our memories are very quick to fade. When we write them down, we create a hard impression. But once we do that, our brain says — hah, this fool finally wrote it down somewhere, now I can let that memory go. And it goes and archive that memory into the deeper much hard-to-access archives. With that, the memory of that experience is no longer accessible, and a summarized carbon copy of the impression we had made replaces it.

This idea is frightening. Frightening because we are at the mercy of the accuracy of our impressions. This increases up the responsibility for how we write. It’s way more often than not that people retro-fit a narrative or a vision to their story. But we should aim for impartiality. Because if we have made any progress, it is by realizing the susceptibility of us getting fooled by no other but ourselves.