Memory Questions

by Frank Garrett

Do you have siblings or a spouse that recalls events differently than you do?

Have you ever interviewed multiple people who attended or witnessed the same event that have different stories?

Our memories are just as fallible as we are, and they are a critical link between our “self” and the lens we view the world through.

Have you ever done this exercise in a workshop as an ice breaker?

In pairs tell each other about an important event that shaped who you are. Second, have your partner introduce you and vise-versa. Based on the life event you remember, a stranger now stands up to introduce you. I have done this exercise many times with groups and often the person being introduced confesses later they have never seen themselves in that light. Their sense of self, viewed through another’s lens is not the same as how they see themselves.

There are two fundamental pieces to this exercise, one is your memory/s, second is our ability to listen. The focus here is on the memory side of this experience, a fellow traveller in the SPoR journey Gabrielle Carlton wrote a wonderful piece on listening  https://safetyrisk.net/critical-listening-dealing-risk/, also the iCue process is a listening tool that is fundamental to the SPoR methodology.

Julian Barnes, in his book Changing My Mind recounts various anecdotes highlighting the unreliability of memory, an excerpt from that book We Remember as true things that never happened , explores the idea that our sense of self is intrinsically linked to our changing beliefs.

Memory is a crucial factor in changing our minds, as it shapes our understanding of the past and influences our present beliefs. Many years ago I listened to a podcast that explained some of the neuroscience of memory and the one key point that has stuck with me is: each time we take a memory off the shelf to share it with others we change it slightly.

So does that then slowly change our sense of self?

When I was five years old our house caught fire at 2am on New Year’s Day. Our mother woke everyone and we evacuated the house, no I’m not gonna say in an orderly fashion, because it wasn’t something we had considered. I stopped at the last step of the stairs as I had done hundreds of times before and proceeded to put my winter boots on. The stairway was inline with the front door where my oldest sister stood on the deck outside calling me and cajoling me to get a move on.  I barely had my boots on, when I stood up and took a couple steps away from the staircase, the entire kitchen wall and stairs collapsed into a ball of fire. The oil heater that caused the fire was directly behind the staircase in the back porch and had burned through the pantry (under the stairs). I joined my sister on the deck and we were whisked off to sit in Dads ’59 Fairlane away from the fire, the falling embers and the neighbours who were running in and out of the house carrying our belongings out.

I cannot honestly tell you how much of this is my memory, family folklore or embellishments from a memory repeated over and over that has outlived both my parents.

The sense of self I’ve always taken from this memory/story is my capacity for following the rules, I’ve always made a connection between listening and following rules because early in my life they saved my life. If there was anyone alive today who could retell the story through their lens would it change my sense of self?

When we do investigations, are we considering that memory is more akin to imagination than a precise record of events, subject to distortion and reinvention over time, or that the incident could have a stronger connection to the person’s sense of self than they will admit/recognise? Do we consider that the mind abhors a vacuum, so if there is information missing our minds will work to fill that void, often using imagination or someone else’s memory as our own?

These concepts are not listed in the investigation checklists or the software that so many organizations use, but we will discuss personhood, i-thou, paradox, embodied learning, worldviews, suspending agendas and the fallibility of our memories and iCue when we meet in Houston for the May 2025 SPoR sessions.

Join us to learn more.

https://linktr.ee/SPoR.USA.may2025