A Memory of a Memory of a Memory
Why our minds aren’t filing cabinets—and why that's not a bad thing
There’s a theory that holds that every time you remember something, you're not remembering the original event. You're remembering the last time you remembered it. Like a cassette tape dubbed over too many times, each playback introduces new noise, new distortion. Sometimes the memory sharpens. Sometimes it slips away.
For years, I had this terrifying memory—or maybe it was a dream, or something in between. Everything’s dark, except for a bright light shining straight in my face. I can’t move—someone's holding me down. Voices are shouting. My dad is there. I see him clearly, even now, with his glasses on, but the glare from the light hides his eyes. I have no idea what’s happening. Just that it’s scary. And painful. I remember something pressing into me. Sharp. Urgent. Dangerous.
If I were the type to believe in recovered memory therapy (I’m not), I might’ve convinced myself this was evidence of Satanic ritual abuse—one of those completely debunked moral panics from the ’80s and ’90s. Others might say alien abduction. Nope. Not buying that ticket either.
Eventually, I just accepted it as one of those brain glitches that would never be explained. Until the day, years later, my dad told a story—offhandedly, while reminiscing with me and my wife.
He remembered the time I was a little kid and smacked my face into the sharp corner of a table. Split my eyelid wide open. They rushed me to the family doctor, afraid I might lose my eye. The doc took a look and said, “The eye’s fine, but we’ve got to stitch the lid closed.” I was bleeding. Screaming. Thrashing. The doctor barked, “Hold him still or he really will lose the eye!” My dad, and at least one other person, pinned me down as the needle went in.
That was it. That was the scene. Not a dream. Not a horror movie. Not repressed trauma. Just a scary, real thing that happened to a small child. And it left a mark—not just the faint scar over my left eye, but in my memory. A scar of the mind.
Our Minds Are Less Like Hard Drives, More Like Jazz
Which brings me to something I read recently from cognitive scientist Elan Barenholtz: memory isn’t retrieval. It’s generation.
He says most of us think of memories as static files in a mental hard drive—just waiting to be pulled up and rewatched. But that’s not how it works. When you recall your mother’s face, for example, your brain doesn’t fetch a photo. It rebuilds her face on the fly—generating a mental image using layers of sensory, emotional, and contextual information. Each time you remember, you're issuing a new prompt. And your brain fills in the blanks.
Barenholtz explains it like this: there is no fixed "image" of your mother in your head. There's only a process your brain can perform when asked. So if someone could decode your brain, they wouldn't find her face. They'd have to recreate the neural act of generation to see it.
So yes—memories can feel vivid, even cinematic. But what you're seeing is your brain's latest best guess, not a preserved reel of footage. And each act of remembering subtly rewrites the past.
Why This Matters (Besides Freaking You Out Slightly)
This generative model of memory isn’t just a mind-blowing idea—it actually changes how we think about learning, education, eyewitness testimony, trauma therapy, and even how we tell stories to ourselves about who we are.
It means:
Your most cherished childhood moment? You’ve probably altered it dozens of times.
Your big regret? May not have happened the way you remember.
That embarrassing thing you said in 2003? Might not have landed quite like you think. (Breathe easier.)
It also explains why studying works better when we retrieve knowledge repeatedly (rather than just rereading), and why reconstructing information from different angles deepens memory.
So What Do We Do With This?
Instead of trying to preserve memories like photographs, maybe we train ourselves to become better reconstructors. That means being mindful of the stories we tell ourselves. Being intentional about the cues and contexts we use to remember things. And maybe giving ourselves a little grace when memories don’t line up with someone else’s.
We’re not tape recorders. We’re storytellers. And memory is the act of storytelling.
I think you were abducted by a UFO. And your dad's an alien.
Memory has always been very interesting to me. I have a particularly keen ability to remember people’s faces and names, dates and events, the page number and location of a particular passage in a book…odd things. Sometimes it’s advantageous. Remembering people goes a long way in making friends and in scoring points at work! Other times, I’d rather not remember unpleasant, even traumatic, events and experiences.
All of it still fascinating.