My wife and I have lived together for more than 60 years. We haven't been together every moment of those years but basically the great portion of them, we have. So, it is surprising when she remembers something we did together that I don't remember. Well, it used to be surprising. Not having identical memories has happened to us enough times that we have gotten a bit used to discrepancies coming up.
I have been reading the book "Moonwalking with Einstein" by Joshua Foer about memory. I am not too far into it. So far, I have learned that most humans can distinguish between pictures they have seen and pictures they haven't seen very well. The book discusses giving memory tests in which 2500 images are shown for 3 seconds each and then later testing by asking which of a pair of pictures was in the set looked at. People can do quite well in that test and the conclusion has often been that visual memory, remembering what has been seen, is very powerful.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=2500+pictures+to+test+memory
I guess it is quite possible that my memories are not very accurate. I have heard that every time I recall something, the memory information is modified a little. My sister is a little bit younger than me and I can remember looking through the passenger side window of our family car and seeing her as a tiny newborn in my mother's arms. But when you ask me the color of the car or her blanket or what Mom was wearing, I don't know. I do remember that Mom told me at the time to go into the living room of the house so she could let me hold the little bundle. I remember that I did and that I held her sitting on our couch but again the memory lacks many details.
I think the present moment is always important and much of the time, the past hour or day or week is actually less important. I can feel good about something I did or that happened but I think the memory is just like a line of text in a list: "I made coffee" or "I took out the trash". I have two dozen or so notebooks in which I started some sort of memory book or diary but I am aware that I have not felt a desire to go through them and recall things. I have many blog posts and once in a while, I do look through them, usually at the same date in an earlier year.
