Is my reality the same as yours?

Do you remember it correctly? Or are some images, some moments, some smells a little stronger than the others. You know the moment that you cherish and your brother probably hates to think about. We live such different lives, all of us. Even someone as close as our siblings, the people who grew up in the same home as us, the ones who you share a lot of memories with, has had such a different life.

Every moment, every memory that we have is defined by how we see it. Do you know why that happens?

The way long term memory really works is that every time you remember something, you don’t actually recall the memory itself. You recall the last time you remembered it. I know that sounds a little confusing, so let me explain.

Maybe when you were 5, you got a bicycle as a gift and it had supporter wheels. Then when you were 10, you told someone about it and forgot to mention the supporter wheels. So now, when at 15 you remember the incident again, your mind doesn’t really recall the original memory. It recalls the last version of it that you remembered.

Repeat that process enough times and memories start getting distorted.

Which is why as we grow older, we lose a lot of specifics. The amount of moments in our lives keeps increasing but we don’t revisit all of them equally. The memories we repeatedly go back to stay vivid and the ones we don’t slowly become fuzzy.

And that shapes your reality more than you realise.

Coming back to siblings, a brother and a sister who grew up in the same home might still end up with completely opposing worldviews. The brother might feel deeply loved while the sister feels like that same family environment is the reason she still struggles with anxiety.

And both of them might have a very hard time understanding why the other person doesn’t see it the same way. They might even bring up incidents to prove their point. Chances are that the other person either doesn’t remember it at all or remembers it in a completely different way.

Their realities will probably never fully match and both of them may continue believing that the other person is simply unwilling to understand them. But that is not always true. Sometimes people are not refusing to understand you. They are protecting a completely different version of reality.

Now think about all the incidents that take up space in your head and slowly build a certain story for you.

• “They didn’t respond because they don’t like me.”

• “I have given everything to this friendship and they are just ungrateful.”

• “My family has never supported me.”

Don’t you think there is a chance that this is not fully the reality for the other person? That maybe your mind keeps revisiting the moments that reinforce the hurt while slowly forgetting the moments where they were there for you?

Our brains can play a lot of tricks on us, especially when it comes to memory.

A single honest conversation about your reality versus theirs can uncover things that neither of you fully understood before. Gaps can be understood. Intentions can become clearer. Maybe, just maybe, both people can finally understand where the other person is coming from.

And even after all that, if nothing changes, then maybe your doubts were right.

But at least you tried. And isn’t that worth something? Trying.

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A lot of the stories we carry about people are built from the moments our minds keep replaying the most. If there’s a relationship, memory, or emotional pattern that you keep revisiting in your head and can’t seem to make sense of, you can anonymously submit it for Loop Breaker Fridays below.

Every Friday, I respond to a few through Notes.