Do our souls have a memory? Are there some scars that we can never truly recover from? Do some people and events leave imprints too deep to heal? These are my questions this evening.
Here’s what spurned me on to speak about this particular issue: I was driving down South San Fernando Boulevard in Glendale on my way back from a friend’s house this weekend when a song came on the radio and hit me like a ton of bricks. Not only did I remember every feeling I’ve ever had in regard to that song, but I felt it deeply. It went beyond thinking, “Oh when this song was on my top 25 Itunes playlist, I was sad”…It was more like every physical, guttural, sensation I had ever had in regard to the particular pain that had accompanied that song was hitting me again just as strongly as before. It went far beyond my brain and into my gut and chest-two places that I firmly believe have their own intellect and emotional recall. I felt as if every aspect of my humanity that held the reigns to my emotion was remembering the pain.
This made me think of singing. You may be wondering: “Why, Lauren, Why?” So glad you asked: in singing there’s something we talk about called sense memory. For example: when you sing in a particular style a good deal, employing a specific technique, it becomes second nature and you don’t even have to think about it anymore because it is in your, “sense memory.”
So back to my question: Is there some pain that permeates our soul so deeply that it creates a sense memory? This confuses me because I have felt for a while now that our intellect can trump our emotion. But now I’m wondering what if that’s actually not true? What if our heart is the ultimate intelligence? What if when it has been wounded deeply and without warning, it doesn’t know how to start anew and protects you on instinct? You can know in your intellect that something is over and you have moved on, but what happens when the imprint of that feeling is stamped into you so deeply that even though your brain knows the moment over, the initial pain feels real and raw?
It could be an evolutionary thing. Our first pain is like a vaccination for all future pain to come. It infects us so that when we encounter the really jarring heartbreak we’re armed with the emotional antibodies to know how to fight it off. The first cut is the deepest, and I know that, thanks to a cover Sheryl Crow did, and my life. But after that first cut, perhaps, we are able to get stitches and learn that if you touch sharp things, you’re going to get a boo boo. So don’t do it, or at least do it with care, for heavens sake! Blunt the edges! Real Life Application: Don’t date the same bad guy with a different face. Don’t make friends with a pathological liar more than a few times. Don’t expect your Mom to bake you cookies from scratch, though she may promise she will. IT NEVER HAPPENS. ETC.
I guess what I conclude with is this: Your brain can know you’ve moved on or gotten closure from a certain situation in your life, but as I learned in Interpersonal communication class: Grief never truly disappears, it simply gets further away. There are certain triggers that can make it seem as raw and real as the first time. So for us deep feelers, we need to be careful. To remember that it is okay to feel deeply again, even though some part of us warns us not to because we might get hurt. In that case I think it’s our intellect working in conjunction with our sense memory, but either way, we must learn to quiet them both down, sing them a lullaby, and tell them it’s going to be okay. As human beings we are made to feel. It’s healthy and necessary. Though some of those feelings may be painful, all feelings we experience give us the opportunity to advance our souls, if we choose to learn from them. Choose to learn: let love in. You can be aware of your sense memory, but don’t let it keep you from exploring something great just to save yourself from pain.
The Mind-Heart connection is alive in well within our species and they can be a great collabo if we let them strive for a healthy balance. Find the love, find the positive thoughts, learn from the past and find a way to move on to new experiences.
Xoxo
Lolo
