What do we actually remember?

Theory of Knowledge Journal Six

During my dance lesson last week one of my classmates turned to me and said, "Do you remember at last years recital when we had like six dances?! It was crazy!" I looked at her and replied with, "Casey, don't you remember? I wasn't here last year for the recital, I was in Austria" This has happened to me so much since coming home. My friends and family will talk about an event that happened while I was away as if I was there. When I remind them that I was out of the country they get surprised, think for a moment and then say, "Oh I guess you weren't there...thats so weird! I totally remember you being there!" It got me thinking about memory and how it can deceive us. I have danced in every spring recital with Casey since we were four. So when I missed one, her brain just filled me in. Even though I wasn't there, she remembers me being there. I believe our memories become distorted from the actual events based on if the event was repeated in the past and how we were feeling. But is it in fact a distortion or simply and illustration of emotion? What can we rely on from our memory? Do we remember a sequence of events or do we only remember them by how we connect them to a feeling and what logically makes sense? For example when Casey thought I was at the dance recital she remembers how it felt to have me there from the past ten or so recitals so her brain just filled me in, because logically that would make sense. Our memory can also block out things that we don't want to remember or and even change events so that they appeared better in our favor so that we can remember ourselves in a better light. In a book I read this year called "An Abundance of Katherines" a boy is dumped by nineteen Katherines. In the book he runs into one of the first Katherines. A girl he dated for couple days at a summer camp in fifth grade. They got to talking and she tells the story of when he dumped her. He says, "No you dumped me" and tells the story how he remembers it. Which was entirely different. But as she told her story again he began to remember it. His memory changed how the event happened based on what he WANTED to remember. So how accurate is our memory really? Is it possible that we remember things that never even happened? Its a scary thought but in the end does it really matter? Because in the end that is what we remember, whether it happened or not its going to seem like it did.