memory walk essay

Going Down Memory Lane: The Value of Reminiscing

Reviewing life events helps us to better understand their effect on us..

Posted June 30, 2023 | Reviewed by Davia Sills

• All too often, we forget lessons learned from the past.
• Reminiscing can stimulate thoughts and events long forgotten. Remembering them can be revitalizing.
• Reminiscing is a life-long activity, starting as a child with parents and continuing to our elder years.

Reminiscing is an activity that can provide both cognitive and emotional meaning to our lives. It occurs when we think about past events or experiences or when we discuss them with others. According to Bluck, Alea, and Demiray (2010), recounting memories can guide our actions and can assist us in bonding with others.

Parental Reminiscing

The first instance of reminiscing occurs when we are children and interacting with our parents for bonding purposes. These “joint reminiscences” between child and parent (often the mother) not only build and strengthen their relationship but also help the child feel good about themself. Another outcome of young children reminiscing is the development of their self-concept , which impacts their self-competence and social acceptance.

Moreover, this joint reminiscing with the parent teaches the child the value of remembering past experiences and how to construct them so as to be able to remember and share them with others (Kulkofsky, Behrens, & Battin, 2015). Another important contribution of recalling past events and conversations about them is that the child has had time to remember and reflect upon the experience as well as have a better idea of assessing why the event was important and its personal relevance to the child (Behrens, 2015).

Benefits of Reminiscing as an Adult

Thinking about our memories can elicit many positive functions for oneself. Reflecting on people, events, or situations opens us up to savoring those experiences. It also stimulates other beneficial outcomes, such as:

• Engaging in self-reflection so as to give meaning to one’s life
• By recalling one’s past, we become more aware that our years are limited and, therefore, more prepared for death
• Sharing one’s life experiences to help others by informing them or giving advice (Demiray, Mischer, and Martin (2019)

In addition, recalling difficult times and recognizing how they coped can remind someone of their resilience .

Most people engage in reminiscing when they are with others. This form of “social reminiscence ,” with conversational disclosure of one’s past, including the recall of positive and negative events, can be very therapeutic. Disclosing one’s personal past in social settings helps maintain emotional bonds to connect or reconnect with others, as well as acknowledge similarities.

Reminiscing is not limited to the aged; that is, reflecting on the past and reviewing one’s experiences can be helpful at any age. However, older individuals may be more nostalgic and want to remember the long lives they led and go to a place in their memory that elicits encouraging and satisfying remembrances. Often this occurs among older people who benefit from recalling memories of themselves when they believed they were capable and had fulfilling lives.

Erikson (1959) identified eight stages of psychosocial development, the last stage being “Ego Integrity vs. Despair.” This stage is for individuals 65 years and older. He identified this period as one when the person has slowed down, is less productive, and is now at an age when retirement is expected. The purpose of this stage is to reflect on their accomplishments for which they can develop integrity and believe they led a successful life.

However, if someone sees themselves as leading an unproductive life or feels guilty or bad about not accomplishing their life goals , they are in despair and experience depression and hopelessness. These delineations, however, are not so definite. Most successful people experience both ego integrity and despair at different points in their life.

Clearly, this last stage is a time for reminiscence among seniors regarding the life they have led. If one cannot see a successful life lived, the frequency of reminiscing may be reduced.

Therapeutic Benefits of Reminiscing

Reminiscing can be a focused activity, particularly for older aged persons, irrespective of whether they are healthy or not. Many health and rehabilitation facilities offer activities directed toward successful aging in place. Reminiscing is most popular with occupational and activity therapies (Fletcher, 2017). Simple life review disclosures can attract participation from others. The social interaction is enhanced if the participants had similar events and now share their common or unique experiences.

Other means to evoke memories include mementos. For example, many older people have photographs arranged in their homes that have special meanings and remembrances. Seeing these memorialized depictions can activate memories and return the viewer to that place and time. Often, the most meaningful photos may be placed in personal spaces where emotional reminiscing is intended as opposed to public rooms where reminiscing is not expected to be as emotionally laden. Other personal items or acquisitions that depict or remind one of past experiences can also evoke memories of people or events that were meaningful.

It is important to live in the present and be aware of the here and now. However, remembering past experiences and profiting from them encourages the evolution of a better self and life, no matter one’s age.

Bluck, S., Alea, N., & Demiray, B. (2010). You get what you need: The psychosocial functions of remembering. In J. Mace (Ed.), The act of remembering: Toward an understanding of how we recall the past , pp. 284–307). UK: Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

Demiray, B., Mischler, M., Martin, M. (2019). Reminiscence in everyday conversations: A naturalistic observation study of older adults. Journals of Gerontology, Psychology Science3, 74 (5), 745–755. doi: 10.1093/geronb/gbx141.

Erikson, E. H. (1959), Identity and the life cycle. International Universities Press, New York.

Fletcher, T. S. (2017). Factors that bring meaning to mementos created by elders. Aging & Mental Health, 21 (6), 609-615. doi.org/10.1080/13607863.2016.1141284

Kulkofsky, S., Behrens, K. Y., & Battin, D. B. (2015). The bonds that remind us: Maternal reminiscing for bonding purposes in relation to children’s perceived competence and social acceptance. Infant and Child Development, 24 (5), 469–488. https://doi.org/10.1002/icd.1895

Shoba Sreenivasan, Ph.D., and Linda E. Weinberger, Ph.D. , are psychology professors at the Keck School of Medicine at USC.

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Why Walking Helps Us Think

By Ferris Jabr

In Vogue ’ s 1969 Christmas issue, Vladimir Nabokov offered some advice for teaching James Joyce’s “Ulysses”: “Instead of perpetuating the pretentious nonsense of Homeric, chromatic, and visceral chapter headings, instructors should prepare maps of Dublin with Bloom’s and Stephen’s intertwining itineraries clearly traced.” He drew a charming one himself. Several decades later, a Boston College English professor named Joseph Nugent and his colleagues put together an annotated Google map that shadows Stephen Dedalus and Leopold Bloom step by step. The Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain, as well as students at the Georgia Institute of Technology, have similarly reconstructed the paths of the London amblers in “ Mrs. Dalloway .”

Such maps clarify how much these novels depend on a curious link between mind and feet. Joyce and Woolf were writers who transformed the quicksilver of consciousness into paper and ink. To accomplish this, they sent characters on walks about town. As Mrs. Dalloway walks, she does not merely perceive the city around her. Rather, she dips in and out of her past, remolding London into a highly textured mental landscape, “making it up, building it round one, tumbling it, creating it every moment afresh.”

Since at least the time of peripatetic Greek philosophers, many other writers have discovered a deep, intuitive connection between walking, thinking, and writing. (In fact, Adam Gopnik wrote about walking in The New Yorker just two weeks ago.) “How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live!” Henry David Thoreau penned in his journal . “Methinks that the moment my legs begin to move, my thoughts begin to flow.” Thomas DeQuincey has calculated that William Wordsworth—whose poetry is filled with tramps up mountains, through forests, and along public roads—walked as many as a hundred and eighty thousand miles in his lifetime, which comes to an average of six and a half miles a day starting from age five.

What is it about walking, in particular, that makes it so amenable to thinking and writing? The answer begins with changes to our chemistry. When we go for a walk, the heart pumps faster, circulating more blood and oxygen not just to the muscles but to all the organs—including the brain. Many experiments have shown that after or during exercise, even very mild exertion, people perform better on tests of memory and attention . Walking on a regular basis also promotes new connections between brain cells, staves off the usual withering of brain tissue that comes with age, increases the volume of the hippocampus (a brain region crucial for memory), and elevates levels of molecules that both stimulate the growth of new neurons and transmit messages between them.

The way we move our bodies further changes the nature of our thoughts, and vice versa. Psychologists who specialize in exercise music have quantified what many of us already know: listening to songs with high tempos motivates us to run faster, and the swifter we move, the quicker we prefer our music. Likewise, when drivers hear loud, fast music, they unconsciously step a bit harder on the gas pedal. Walking at our own pace creates an unadulterated feedback loop between the rhythm of our bodies and our mental state that we cannot experience as easily when we’re jogging at the gym, steering a car, biking, or during any other kind of locomotion. When we stroll, the pace of our feet naturally vacillates with our moods and the cadence of our inner speech; at the same time, we can actively change the pace of our thoughts by deliberately walking more briskly or by slowing down.

Because we don’t have to devote much conscious effort to the act of walking, our attention is free to wander—to overlay the world before us with a parade of images from the mind’s theatre. This is precisely the kind of mental state that studies have linked to innovative ideas and strokes of insight. Earlier this year, Marily Oppezzo and Daniel Schwartz of Stanford published what is likely the first set of studies that directly measure the way walking changes creativity in the moment. They got the idea for the studies while on a walk. “My doctoral advisor had the habit of going for walks with his students to brainstorm,” Oppezzo says of Schwartz. “One day we got kind of meta.”

In a series of four experiments, Oppezzo and Schwartz asked a hundred and seventy-six college students to complete different tests of creative thinking while either sitting, walking on a treadmill, or sauntering through Stanford’s campus. In one test, for example, volunteers had to come up with atypical uses for everyday objects, such as a button or a tire. On average, the students thought of between four and six more novel uses for the objects while they were walking than when they were seated. Another experiment required volunteers to contemplate a metaphor, such as “a budding cocoon,” and generate a unique but equivalent metaphor, such as “an egg hatching.” Ninety-five per cent of students who went for a walk were able to do so, compared to only fifty per cent of those who never stood up. But walking actually worsened people’s performance on a different type of test, in which students had to find the one word that united a set of three, like “cheese” for “cottage, cream, and cake.” Oppezzo speculates that, by setting the mind adrift on a frothing sea of thought, walking is counterproductive to such laser-focussed thinking: “If you’re looking for a single correct answer to a question, you probably don’t want all of these different ideas bubbling up.”

Where we walk matters as well. In a study led by Marc Berman of the University of South Carolina, students who ambled through an arboretum improved their performance on a memory test more than students who walked along city streets. A small but growing collection of studies suggests that spending time in green spaces—gardens, parks, forests—can rejuvenate the mental resources that man-made environments deplete. Psychologists have learned that attention is a limited resource that continually drains throughout the day. A crowded intersection—rife with pedestrians, cars, and billboards—bats our attention around. In contrast, walking past a pond in a park allows our mind to drift casually from one sensory experience to another, from wrinkling water to rustling reeds.

Still, urban and pastoral walks likely offer unique advantages for the mind. A walk through a city provides more immediate stimulation—a greater variety of sensations for the mind to play with. But, if we are already at the brink of overstimulation, we can turn to nature instead. Woolf relished the creative energy of London’s streets, describing it in her diary as “being on the highest crest of the biggest wave, right in the centre & swim of things.” But she also depended on her walks through England’s South Downs to “ have space to spread my mind out in .” And, in her youth, she often travelled to Cornwall for the summer, where she loved to “ spend my afternoons in solitary trampling ” through the countryside.

Perhaps the most profound relationship between walking, thinking, and writing reveals itself at the end of a stroll, back at the desk. There, it becomes apparent that writing and walking are extremely similar feats, equal parts physical and mental. When we choose a path through a city or forest, our brain must survey the surrounding environment, construct a mental map of the world, settle on a way forward, and translate that plan into a series of footsteps. Likewise, writing forces the brain to review its own landscape, plot a course through that mental terrain, and transcribe the resulting trail of thoughts by guiding the hands. Walking organizes the world around us; writing organizes our thoughts. Ultimately, maps like the one that Nabokov drew are recursive: they are maps of maps.

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Memory Walk

As i strolled around campus, stanford gave me one gift i hadn't expected..

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WELCOME HOME: Once a women's dorm, Storey House is now an undergraduate theme house for human biology. Photo: Matthew Ian Walter Chen, '16

By Alison Davis

One Saturday last summer,  I came upon a few free hours, and I felt the pull of the Farm. Once there, I began to walk, and walk some more, and as I did, I just naturally started to think about my dad. Imaginings of his time there, and memories of mine, with and without him, began to unweave themselves.

He had pushed off from this world the previous January. I wasn’t with him when he died, and I’d been struggling with that, though I really don’t think he cared. In fact, I believe he preferred to be alone. But could I at least have been in the next room? The same city?

I felt a new ease as I meandered around campus, so I went on a walk to remember my dad, John D. Carpenter, Class of 1944. Herewith, a memory walk.

First stop, Encina Hall, repository for 600 or so freshman boys (can you imagine?) in the fall of 1940, including my dad, up from Los Angeles on the Coast Daylight. He always said one of his brothers got into Stanford on smarts and another on suave, but he got in on sheer luck. I never believed him.

At Encina, the sameness of it comforts me: The same Encina Hall inscribed on the front. The same steps, more or less, that my dad likely sprinted up for the first time on a hot move-in afternoon—just another kid with his duffel, on the brink of a future. True, there was no wheelchair ramp or FedEx box back then, and it hasn’t been a residence hall since the ’50s, but it still remains—and imposes. Despite all the infamous high jinks within its frame, you don’t mess with Encina.

Next stop, Avery Aquatic Center. It’s not the same pool where my dad practiced and played water polo for Stanford, but between its name (Burt Avery, ’45, MBA ’48, was a friend), the smell and splash of chlorinated water, and the sound of coaches still blowing whistles on a late Stanford afternoon, I always think of him here. As an alum, he attended the Big Splash whenever he could, and I often went with him.

Up, way up, to San Juan Hill and near the site of the old Delt House. In this place, inside a house that is no more, my dad made some of his life’s best friends—they went off to war together, stood at each other’s weddings and godfathered each other’s children, met for lunch the Friday before Big Game for more than 60 years. Several attended my dad’s memorial service; one spoke. Fraternity boys who would grow into men, first young, then not so, strung together always. The years went way beyond the building.

Back down to Storey House, perhaps taking the route my dad once did to court the woman who would become his wife. Now standing in front of Storey, I picture him approaching the front door, hair slicked, perhaps with a bouquet in hand. In one well-known scene from family lore, my mom sits on a couch, darning a pair of socks for another suitor, a look of horror crossing her face when she sees my dad enter the lounge. She quickly stuffs the socks under a pillow and grabs a pair of my dad’s to start on. They would marry the following year.

Once I’m in White Plaza, I think about my own Stanford past, which, for an instant, feels present. Fellow Soton Tom Bedecarré, ’78, posts signs advertising “Sherry Hour with Jack Carpenter, 6 p.m.”; my dad shows up in the dorm lounge. I’m biking around the old Engineering Corner after my 11:00 lets out, and I practically flatten my parents, not realizing they’re in town. I’m peering through the glass of P.O. Box 5951 for an envelope addressed in a familiar scrawl.

My dad paid his final visit to the Farm in October 2013, for my mom’s 65th reunion. After straining through the weekend, he attended one last event, lovingly orchestrated by several engineering department staff members (thank you, Stacy Fredericksen and Kristina Herbert), a lunch at the Faculty Club for my parents to meet a few of their partial-scholarship recipients. Much to our surprise, four of the students showed up. Admittedly stilted at times, the lunch still mattered.

There were two things we didn’t know that day. First, that cancer already had begun to rage inside my dad. Second, that after the lunch that still mattered ended, photos were taken, and goodbyes were said—and while a van carrying two weary Stanford alums dropped south on Highway 101 and the four John D. & Mary L. Carpenter fellows pressed forward to their labs and lives—a baton was passed quietly.

Stanford gave me a broader view, the man who’d become my husband, and walks around campus at dusk, among so many other things. But little did I know what Stanford would give my grieving 50-something self: the gift of walking where my dad once did, envisioning his clothes and conversation, a gift that brought him closer in when he’d felt farther out, the gift of a memory walk.

I wasn’t with him when he spun out from us, but I can be with him here, and now, amid mortar and memory, in this place of layered time.

Alison Davis , ’ 79,  is a freelance writer who lives a 25-minute drive from Encina Hall.

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Home — Essay Samples — Life — Moment — A Memory That I Will Never Forget

A Memory that I Will Never Forget

• Categories: Moment Personal Life

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Words: 625 |

Published: Sep 16, 2023

Words: 625 | Page: 1 | 4 min read

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The setting, the journey, the encounter.

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A Walk to Remember

69 pages • 2 hours read

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Summary and Study Guide

A Walk to Remember is a 1999 novel by bestselling American romance-writer Nicholas Sparks. It was adapted into a movie in 2002. The novel, set in 1958 in the coastal North Carolina town of Beaufort, builds on the brand Sparks established in his earlier bestselling 1996 novel, The Notebook, which is a historical romance set in a North Carolina coastal town during the 1940s. This North Carolina setting is also a locale of subsequent works, such as Nights in Rodanthe. A common theme of Sparks’s novels seen in the A Walk to Remember is the juxtaposition of two time periods, the present and the past, in which an older person remembers a long-ago love.

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In 1999, the narrator, 57-year-old Landon Carter reflects on the fall of 1958, when he was 17. Directly addressing the reader, he promises that he will deliver the story of that fate-changing year.

In the fall of his senior year of high school, affluent Landon Carter is popular but uncertain of his purpose in life. When his father suggests that he run for student body president to enhance his college prospects, Landon does—and wins the election. He’s stumped by the Homecoming Dance, however, when he cannot find a date amongst the eligible girls in the school. Faced with the prospect of either going alone or taking “the kind of girls who had thick glasses and talked with lisps” (25), Landon elects to invite Jamie Sullivan , who comes from a religious Baptist with whom the capitalist Carter family has something of a feud. Although Landon is embarrassed to be in Jamie’s presence in front of his friends, Jamie comes to his rescue when she prevents his ex-girlfriend’s new boyfriend from beating him up.

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In return, Jamie asks Landon for a favor: to play the lead male role of Tom Thornton in a Christmas play written by her father. Landon is reluctant, but he agrees when Jamie—who will play the lead female role of the Angel—begins crying because she wants the play to be extra special this year.  As Landon and Jamie attend rehearsals, and he walks her home, he learns that the Bible she carries belonged to her deceased mother, and that Jamie’s “practically normal” as opposed to a  superior, religious ideologue (82). He also learns that Jamie wishes to get married in a packed church and have her father give her away.

Still, after a day of difficult rehearsals and being teased by his friends about spending so much time with Jamie, Landon snaps under pressure. He tells her that he cannot wait for the play to be over and for things to return to normal. Seemingly upset, Jamie thanks Landon for walking her home.

The next day, which is the play’s first performance, Landon regrets the way he spoke to Jamie and vows to do a good job of playing Tom Thornton. He’s nervous about delivering the line “You’re beautiful” with conviction, because he does not feel that way about Jamie. However, when he sees her on stage, with her hair loose as opposed to her customary bun, Landon does fall for Jamie’s beauty.

Jamie requests that Landon collect the jars she has placed in stores around town to raise money for the local orphanage. When he sees the measly amount donates, he generously subsidizes with his own savings. Jamie is grateful and invites him to the orphanage on Christmas Eve. Seeing Jamie under the tree, Landon falls in love with her. He invites her to Christmas dinner at his family home and, the next day, kisses her on the porch. While Landon is keen to express his love, he senses that Jamie is holding back and wonders whether she returns the sentiment. One day, she finally confesses her secret: She’s dying of leukemia.

As Landon watches Jamie waste away, he prays for a miracle and begins reading the Bible with her. In a gesture of atonement for the feud between the two families, Landon’s father pays for Jamie’s care so that she can spend her last weeks at home.

One day, when Jamie falls asleep while Landon is speaking to her, he comes across a passage in the Bible: “ I am not commanding you, but I want to test the sincerity of your love by comparing it to the earnestness of others” (161). He interprets this as a direct command from God to fulfil Jamie’s wish and marry her. When 57-year-old Landon recalls the day that he and Jamie married in a packed church, he knows that it will be his dying memory. The text ends on an ambiguous spiritual note, stating that Landon, who still wears his wedding ring from that day, believes in miracles.

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How to boost brain power at any age

Tip 1: give your brain a workout.

• Tip 2: Don't skip the physical exercise

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Tip 4: make time for friends, tip 5: keep stress in check, tip 6: have a laugh, tip 7: eat a brain-boosting diet, tip 8: identify and treat health problems, tip 9: take practical steps to support learning and memory, how to improve your memory.

Whether you’re looking to sharpen your mind, boost your mental performance, or preserve your memory as you age, these tips can help.

A strong memory depends on the health and vitality of your brain. Whether you’re a student studying for final exams, a working professional interested in doing all you can to stay mentally sharp, or a senior looking to preserve and enhance your grey matter as you age, there’s lots you can do to improve your memory and mental performance

They say that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks, but when it comes to the brain, scientists have discovered that this old adage simply isn’t true. The human brain has an astonishing ability to adapt and change—even into old age. This ability is known as  neuroplasticity . With the right stimulation, your brain can form new neural pathways, alter existing connections, and adapt and react in ever-changing ways.

The brain’s incredible ability to reshape itself holds true when it comes to learning and memory. You can harness the natural power of neuroplasticity to increase your cognitive abilities, enhance your ability to learn new information, and improve your memory at any age. These nine tips can show you how.

By the time you’ve reached adulthood, your brain has developed millions of neural pathways that help you process and recall information quickly, solve familiar problems, and execute habitual tasks with a minimum of mental effort. But if you always stick to these well-worn paths, you aren’t giving your brain the stimulation it needs to keep growing and developing. You have to shake things up from time to time!

Memory, like muscular strength, requires you to “use it or lose it.” The more you work out your brain, the better you’ll be able to process and remember information. But not all activities are equal. The best brain exercises break your routine and challenge you to use and develop new brain pathways.

Four key elements of a good brain-boosting activity

• It teaches you something new. No matter how intellectually demanding the activity, if it’s something you’re already good at, it’s not a good brain exercise. The activity needs to be something that’s unfamiliar and out of your comfort zone. To strengthen the brain, you need to keep learning and developing new skills.
• It’s challenging. The best brain-boosting activities demand your full and close attention. It’s not enough that you found the activity challenging at one point. It must still be something that requires mental effort. For example, learning to play a challenging new piece of music counts; playing a difficult piece you’ve already memorized does not.
• It’s a skill you can build on. Look for activities that allow you to start at an easy level and work your way up as your skills improve —always pushing the envelope so you continue to stretch your capabilities. When a previously difficult level starts to feel comfortable, that means it’s time to tackle the next level of performance.
• It’s rewarding. Rewards support the brain’s learning process. The more interested and engaged you are in the activity, the more likely you’ll continue doing it and the greater the benefits you’ll experience. So, choose activities that, while challenging, are still enjoyable and satisfying.

Think of something new you’ve always wanted to try, like learning how to play the guitar, make pottery, juggle, play chess, speak French, dance the tango, or master your golf swing. Any of these activities can help you improve your memory, so long as they keep you challenged and engaged.

What about brain-training programs?

There are countless brain-training apps and online programs that promise to boost memory, problem-solving skills, attention, and even IQ with daily practice. But do they really work?

Increasingly, the evidence suggests no. While these brain-training programs may lead to short-term improvements in whatever task or specific game you’ve been practicing, they don’t appear to strengthen or improve overall intelligence, memory, or other cognitive abilities.

Tip 2: Don’t skip the physical exercise

While mental exercise is important for brain health, that doesn’t mean you never need to break a sweat. Physical exercise helps your brain stay sharp. It increases oxygen to your brain and reduces the risk for disorders that lead to memory loss, such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

[Read: The Mental Health Benefits of Exercise]

Exercise also enhances the effects of helpful brain chemicals and reduces stress hormones. Perhaps most importantly, exercise plays an important role in neuroplasticity by boosting growth factors and stimulating new neuronal connections.

Brain-boosting exercise tips

• Aerobic exercise is particularly good for the brain, so choose activities that keep your blood pumping. In general, anything that is good for your heart is great for your brain.
• Does it take you a long time to clear out the sleep fog when you wake up? If so, you may find that exercising in the morning before you start your day makes a big difference. In addition to clearing away the cobwebs, it also primes you for learning throughout the day.
• Physical activities that require hand-eye coordination or complex motor skills are particularly beneficial for brain building.
• Exercise breaks can help you get past mental fatigue and afternoon slumps. Even a short walk or a few jumping jacks can be enough to reboot your brain.

There is a big difference between the amount of sleep you can get by on and the amount you need to function at your best. The truth is that over 95% of adults need between 7.5 to 9 hours of sleep every night in order to avoid sleep deprivation. Even skimping on a few hours makes a difference! Memory, creativity, problem-solving abilities, and critical thinking skills are all compromised.

But sleep is critical to learning and memory in an even more fundamental way. Research shows that sleep is necessary for memory consolidation, with the key memory-enhancing activity occurring during the deepest stages of sleep.

Get on a regular sleep schedule. Go to bed at the same time every night and get up at the same time each morning. Try not to break your routine, even on weekends and holidays.

[Read: How to Sleep Better]

Avoid all screens for at least an hour before bed. The blue light emitted by TVs, tablets, phones, and computers trigger wakefulness and suppress hormones such as melatonin that make you sleepy.

Cut back on caffeine. Caffeine affects people differently. Some people are highly sensitive, and even morning coffee may interfere with sleep at night. Try reducing your intake or cutting it out entirely if you suspect it’s keeping you up.

Speak to a Licensed Therapist

BetterHelp is an online therapy service that matches you to licensed, accredited therapists who can help with depression, anxiety, relationships, and more. Take the assessment and get matched with a therapist in as little as 48 hours.

When you think of ways to improve memory, do you think of “serious” activities such as wrestling with the New York Times crossword puzzle or mastering chess strategy, or is it more lighthearted pastimes—hanging out with friends or enjoying a funny movie—that come to mind? If you’re like most of us, it’s probably the former. But countless studies show that a life full of friends and fun comes with cognitive benefits.

Healthy relationships: the ultimate brain booster

Humans are highly social animals. We’re not meant to survive, let alone thrive, in isolation. Relationships stimulate our brains—in fact, interacting with others may provide the best kind of brain exercise.

Research shows that having meaningful friendships and a strong support system are vital not only to emotional health, but also to brain health. In one recent study from the Harvard School of Public Health, for example, researchers found that people with the most active social lives had the slowest rate of memory decline.

There are many ways to start taking advantage of the brain and memory-boosting benefits of socializing. Volunteer , join a club, make it a point to see friends more often, or reach out over the phone. And if a human isn’t handy, don’t overlook the value of a pet —especially the highly-social dog.

Stress is one of the brain’s worst enemies. Over time, chronic stress destroys brain cells and damages the hippocampus, the region of the brain involved in the formation of new memories and the retrieval of old ones. Studies have also linked stress to memory loss.

Tips for managing stress

• Set realistic expectations (and be willing to say no!)
• Take breaks throughout the day
• Express your feelings instead of bottling them up
• Set a healthy balance between work and leisure time
• Focus on one task at a time, rather than trying to multi-task

[Read: Stress Management]

The stress-busting, memory-boosting benefits of meditation

The scientific evidence for the mental health benefits of meditation continues to pile up. Studies show that meditation helps improve many different types of conditions, including depression, anxiety, chronic pain, diabetes, and high blood pressure. Meditation also can improve focus, concentration, creativity, memory, and learning and reasoning skills.

Meditation works its “magic” by changing the actual brain. Brain images show that regular meditators have more activity in the left prefrontal cortex, an area of the brain associated with feelings of joy and equanimity. Meditation also increases the thickness of the cerebral cortex and encourages more connections between brain cells—all of which increases mental sharpness and memory ability.

Try one of HelpGuide’s free Audio Meditations .

You’ve heard that laughter is the best medicine , and that holds true for the brain and the memory, as well as the body. Unlike emotional responses, which are limited to specific areas of the brain, laughter engages multiple regions across the whole brain.

Furthermore, listening to jokes and working out punch lines activates areas of the brain vital to learning and creativity. As psychologist Daniel Goleman notes in his book Emotional Intelligence, “laughter seems to help people think more broadly and associate more freely.”

Looking for ways to bring more laughter in your life? Start with these basics:

Laugh at yourself. Share your embarrassing moments. The best way to take ourselves less seriously is to talk about the times when we took ourselves too seriously.

When you hear laughter, move toward it. Most of the time, people are very happy to share something funny because it gives them an opportunity to laugh again and feed off the humor you find in it. When you hear laughter, seek it out and try to join in.

Spend time with fun, playful people. These are people who laugh easily—both at themselves and at life’s absurdities—and who routinely find the humor in everyday events. Their playful point of view and laughter are contagious.

Surround yourself with reminders to lighten up. Keep a toy on your desk or in your car. Put up a funny poster in your office. Choose a computer screensaver that makes you laugh. Frame photos of you and your loved ones having fun.

Pay attention to children and emulate them. They are the experts on playing, taking life lightly, and laughing.

Just as the body needs fuel, so does the brain. You probably already know that a diet based on fruits, vegetables, whole grains, “healthy” fats (such as olive oil, nuts, fish) and lean protein will provide lots of health benefits, but such a diet can also improve memory. For brain health, though, it’s not just what you eat—it’s also what you don ‘ t eat.

[Read: Eating Well as You Age]

The following nutritional tips will help boost your brainpower and reduce your risk of dementia:

Get your omega-3s. Research shows that omega-3 fatty acids are particularly beneficial for brain health. Fish is a particularly rich source of omega-3, especially cold water “fatty fish” such as salmon, tuna, halibut, trout, mackerel, sardines, and herring.

If you’re not a fan of seafood, consider non-fish sources of omega-3s such as seaweed, walnuts, ground flaxseed, flaxseed oil, winter squash, kidney and pinto beans, spinach, broccoli, pumpkin seeds, and soybeans.

Limit calories and saturated fat. Research shows that diets high in saturated fat (from sources such as red meat, whole milk, butter, cheese, cream, and ice cream) increase your risk of dementia and impair concentration and memory.

Eat more fruit and vegetables. Produce is packed with antioxidants, substances that protect your brain cells from damage. Colorful fruits and vegetables are particularly good antioxidant “superfood” sources.

Drink green tea. Green tea contains polyphenols, powerful antioxidants that protect against free radicals that can damage brain cells. Among many other benefits, regular consumption of green tea may enhance memory and mental alertness and slow brain aging.

Drink wine (or grape juice) in moderation. Keeping your alcohol consumption in check is key, since alcohol kills brain cells. But in moderation (around 1 glass a day for women; 2 for men), alcohol may actually improve memory and cognition. Red wine appears to be the best option, as it is rich in resveratrol, a flavonoid that boosts blood flow in the brain and reduces the risk of Alzheimer’s disease. Other resveratrol-packed options include grape juice, cranberry juice, fresh grapes and berries, and peanuts.

Do you feel that your memory has taken an unexplainable dip? If so, there may be a health or lifestyle problem to blame.

It’s not just dementia or Alzheimer’s disease that causes memory loss . There are many diseases, mental health disorders, and medications that can interfere with memory:

Heart disease and its risk factors. Cardiovascular disease and its risk factors, including high cholesterol and high blood pressure, have been linked to mild cognitive impairment.

[Read: Blood Pressure and Your Brain]

Diabetes. Studies show that people with diabetes experience far greater cognitive decline than those who don’t suffer from the disease.

Hormone imbalance. Women going through menopause often experience memory problems when their estrogen dips. In men, low testosterone can cause issues. Thyroid imbalances can also cause forgetfulness, sluggish thinking, or confusion.

Medications. Many prescription and over-the-counter medications can get in the way of memory and clear thinking. Common culprits include cold and allergy medications, sleep aids, and antidepressants. Talk to your doctor or pharmacist about possible side effects.

Is it depression?

Emotional difficulties can take just as heavy a toll on the brain as physical problems. In fact, mental sluggishness, difficulty concentrating, and forgetfulness are common symptoms of depression. The memory issues can be particularly bad in older people who are depressed-so much so that it is sometimes mistaken for dementia. The good news is that when the depression is treated , memory should return to normal.

Pay attention. You can’t remember something if you never learned it, and you can’t learn something—that is, encode it into your brain—if you don’t pay enough attention to it. It takes about eight seconds of intense focus to process a piece of information into your memory. If you’re easily distracted, pick a quiet place where you won’t be interrupted.

Involve as many senses as possible. Try to relate information to colors, textures, smells, and tastes. The physical act of rewriting information can help imprint it onto your brain. Even if you’re a visual learner, read out loud what you want to remember. If you can recite it rhythmically, even better.

Relate information to what you already know. Connect new data to information you already remember, whether it’s new material that builds on previous knowledge, or something as simple as an address of someone who lives on a street where you already know someone.

For more complex material, focus on understanding basic ideas rather than memorizing isolated details. Practice explaining the ideas to someone else in your own words.

Rehearse information you’ve already learned. Review what you’ve learned the same day you learn it, and at intervals thereafter. This “spaced rehearsal” is more effective than cramming, especially for retaining what you’ve learned.

Use mnemonic devices to make memorization easier. Mnemonics (the initial “m” is silent) are clues of any kind that help us remember something, usually by helping us associate the information we want to remember with a visual image, a sentence, or a word.

6 types of mnemonic device

• Visual image – Associate a visual image with a word or name to help you remember them better. Positive, pleasant images that are vivid, colorful, and three-dimensional will be easier to remember.  Example: To remember the name Rosa Parks and what she’s known for, picture a woman sitting on a park bench surrounded by roses, waiting as her bus pulls up.
• Acrostic (or sentence) – Make up a sentence in which the first letter of each word is part of or represents the initial of what you want to remember.  Example: The sentence “Every good boy does fine” to memorize the lines of the treble clef, representing the notes E, G, B, D, and F.
• Acronym – An acronym is a word that is made up by taking the first letters of all the key words or ideas you need to remember and creating a new word out of them.  Example: The word “HOMES” to remember the names of the Great Lakes: Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, and Superior.
• Rhymes and alliteration – Rhymes, alliteration (a repeating sound or syllable), and even jokes are memorable way to remember more mundane facts and figures.  Example: The rhyme “Thirty days hath September, April, June, and November” to remember the months of the year with only 30 days in them.
• Chunking – Chunking breaks a long list of numbers or other types of information into smaller, more manageable chunks.  Example: Remembering a 10-digit phone number by breaking it down into three sets of numbers: 555-867-5309 (as opposed to 5558675309).
• Method of loci – Imagine placing the items you want to remember along a route you know well, or in specific locations in a familiar room or building.  Example: For a shopping list, imagine bananas in the entryway to your home, a puddle of milk in the middle of the sofa, eggs going up the stairs, and bread on your bed.

More Information

• Improving Memory - Understanding age-related memory loss. (Harvard Medical School Special Health Report)
• Achieving Optimal Memory - (Harvard Health Books)
• Don’t Forget! Playing Games With Memory - Games that test memory along with advice for improving recollection. (The Exploratorium, San Francisco)
• If Fish Is Brain Food, Can Fish Oil Pills Boost Brains, Too? - Evidence that eating fish is more effective than fish oil supplements. (NPR)
• Keep Your Brain Alive Exercise - Memory improvement exercises. (Neurobics.com)
• Derbyshire, E. (2018). Brain Health across the Lifespan: A Systematic Review on the Role of Omega-3 Fatty Acid Supplements. Nutrients, 10 (8), 1094. Link
• Ertel, K. A., Glymour, M. M., & Berkman, L. F. (2008). Effects of Social Integration on Preserving Memory Function in a Nationally Representative US Elderly Population. American Journal of Public Health, 98 (7), 1215–1220. Link
• Gomes-Osman, J., Cabral, D. F., Morris, T. P., McInerney, K., Cahalin, L. P., Rundek, T., Oliveira, A., & Pascual-Leone, A. (2018). Exercise for cognitive brain health in aging: A systematic review for an evaluation of dose. Neurology: Clinical Practice, 8 (3), 257–265. Link
• Leanos, S., Kürüm, E., Strickland-Hughes, C. M., Ditta, A. S., Nguyen, G., Felix, M., Yum, H., Rebok, G. W., & Wu, R. (2020). The Impact of Learning Multiple Real-World Skills on Cognitive Abilities and Functional Independence in Healthy Older Adults. The Journals of Gerontology: Series B, 75 (6), 1155–1169. Link
• McKim, D. B., Niraula, A., Tarr, A. J., Wohleb, E. S., Sheridan, J. F., & Godbout, J. P. (2016). Neuroinflammatory Dynamics Underlie Memory Impairments after Repeated Social Defeat. The Journal of Neuroscience, 36 (9), 2590–2604. Link
• Meditation and Mindfulness: What You Need To Know | NCCIH. (n.d.). Retrieved August 1, 2022, from Link
• Okereke, O. I., Rosner, B. A., Kim, D. H., Kang, J. H., Cook, N. R., Manson, J. E., Buring, J. E., Willett, W. C., & Grodstein, F. (2012). Dietary fat types and 4-year cognitive change in community-dwelling older women. Annals of Neurology, 72 (1), 124–134. Link
• Rasch, B., & Born, J. (2013). About Sleep’s Role in Memory. Physiological Reviews, 93 (2), 681–766. Link
• Seidler, R. (2007). Older adults can learn to learn new motor skills. Behavioural Brain Research, 183 (1), 118–122. Link
• The impact of diabetes on cognitive decline: Potential vascular, metabolic, and psychosocial risk factors | Alzheimer’s Research & Therapy | Full Text. (n.d.). Retrieved August 1, 2022, from Link

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Psychology Discussion

Essay on memory: (meaning and types).

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Read this Comprehensive Essay on Memory: Meaning, Nature and Types of Memory !

Meaning and Nature :

Memory is one of the important cognitive processes. Memory involves remembering and forgetting.

These are like two faces of a coin. Though these two are opposed to each other by nature, they play an important role in the life of an individual.

Remembering the pleasant experiences makes living happy, and on the other hand remembering unpleasant experiences makes living unhappy and miserable. So here forgetting helps individual to forget unwanted and unpleasant experiences and memories and keeps him happy.

In this way, remembering the pleasant and forgetting the- unpleasant both are essential for normal living. In the case of learners, remembering is very important, because without memory there would be no learning.

If learning has to progress, remembering of what is already learnt is indispensable, otherwise every time the learner has to start from the beginning.

The memory is defined as ‘the power to store experiences and to bring them into the field of consciousness sometime after the experience has occurred’. Our mind has the power of conserving experiences and mentally receiving them whenever such an activity helps the onward progress of the life cycle.

The conserved experience has a unity, an organisation of its own and it colours our present experience.

However, as stated above we have a notion that memory is a single process, but an analysis of it reveals involvement of three different activities- learning, retention and remembering.

This is the first stage of memory. Learning may be by any of the methods like imitation, verbal, motor, conceptual, trial and error, insight, etc. Hence, whatever may be the type of learning; we must pay our attention to retain what is learnt. A good learning is necessary for better retention.

Retention is the process of retaining in mind what is learnt or experienced in the past. The learnt material must be retained in order to make progress in our learning. Psychologists are of the opinion that the learnt material will be retained in the brain in the form of neural traces called ‘memory traces’, or ‘engrams’, or ‘neurograms’.

When good learning takes place –clear engrams are formed, so that they remain for long time and can be remembered by activation of these traces whenever necessary.

Remembering:

It is the process of bringing back the stored or retained information to the conscious level. This may be understood by activities such as recalling, recognising, relearning and reconstruction.

Recalling is the process of reproducing the past experiences that are not present. For example, recalling answers in the examination hall.

Recognising:

It is to recognise a person seen earlier, or the original items seen earlier, from among the items of the same class or category which they are mixed-up.

Relearning:

Relearning is also known as saving method. Because we measure retention in terms of saving in the number of repetition or the time required to relearn the assignment. The difference between the amount of time or trials required for original learning and the one required for relearning indicates the amount of retention.

Reconstruction:

Reconstruction is otherwise called rearrangement. Here the material to learn will be presented in a particular order and then the items will be jumbled up or shuffled thoroughly and presented to the individual to rearrange them in the original order in which it was presented.

Types of Memory :

There are five kinds of memory. These are classified on the basis of rates of decay of the information.

a. Sensory memory:

In this kind of memory, the information received by the sense organs will remain there for a very short period like few seconds. For example, the image on the screen of a TV may appear to be in our eyes for a fraction of time even when it is switched off, or the voice of a person will be tingling in our ears even after the voice is ceased.

b. Short-term memory (STM):

According to many studies, in STM the memory remains in our conscious and pre-conscious level for less than 30 seconds. Later on this will be transferred to long-term memory.

c. Long-term memory (LTM):

LTM has the unlimited capacity to store information which may remain for days, months, years or lifetime.

d. Eidetic memory:

It is otherwise called photographic memory in which the individual can remember a scene or an event in a photographic detail.

e. Episodic memory:

This is otherwise called semantic memory which is connected with episodes of events. The events are stored in the form of episodes and recalled fully in the manner of a sequence.

Related Articles:

• 11 Factors that Influence Memory Process in Humans
• 7 Main Factors that Influence Retention Power | Memory | Psychology
• Essay on Forgetting: Causes and Theories
• Memory Types: 3 Main Types of Memory | Remembering | Psychology

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We present a simple model of a random walk with partial memory, which we call the \emph{random memory walk}. We introduce this model motivated by the belief that it mimics the behavior of the once-reinforced random walk in high dimensions and with small reinforcement. We establish the transience of the random memory walk in dimensions three and higher, and show that its scaling limit is a Brownian motion.

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A Walk to Remember (Reaction Paper)

2020, A Walk to Remember (Reaction Paper)

One movie has inspired a many; one movie wrench the hearts of the viewers and finally one movie where truth is definite by some characteristics and proofs. “A walk to remember” left a mark to reflect and mirror forthright facts and multiple insights where the movie’s nemesis is unpredictable from the start. The reaction paper also relates to the different theory in Philosophy where truth needs to be justified and how it is believed.

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The article is a review for the book of Prof.Dr. Konul Bunyadzade “Wis-dom of Love: Rabia al-Adawiyya and Edith Stein”. The author of the ar¬tic¬le notes that the book is very important as a chance to build a solid foun¬da¬tion for an ever grea¬ter communion between the two great monotheistic re¬li¬gions, precisely Islam and Chris¬tianity and to show how a “common” path of research can be follo¬wed. “Love” and “grace” are the benchmarks of this book where Bunyadzade compared the views of Rabia al-Adawiyya and Edith Stein – the true servers of their religions as Islam and Christianity. This book brings us back to the importance of a “com¬mu¬ni¬ty work” that can be¬co¬me a way of life, since the search for “Truth” cannot be con¬ducted in iso¬la¬tion, but it needs the help of many associates in order to be reached. These fea¬tures and the method of the book make it not only an unicum, but also a no¬vum showing how it is possible to undertake such an itinerary when we let ourselves be guided by “Wisdom”. The “Wisdom” is a companion on the road who walks with us silently; only by crossing its silence we can un¬ders¬tand how the words that arise from this silence are no longer those that we use in everyday language, but we can hear in it the words rich in meaning. Bun¬yadzade’s merit was that of restoring these "words" through the poetic lan¬guage of Rabia and that of Edith in his Kreuzeswissenschaft (Scientia crucis), a work that she ended in the silence of the Auschwitz-Birkenau ex¬ter¬mi¬nation camp. The author of the article notes that this book “infuses faith into hu¬ma-nity”. Moreover, it is also an ethical duty to continue to reflect on what the Aut-hor has so generously “returned” to us in a sharing spirit which is also an invitation to communion. Continuing to think is necessary to act thinking.

Charles Justice

As a PA(Philosophical Anthropologist), I know that truth is central to human existence. Journalists also know this because they are on the front lines of misleading publicity, the public lies of politicians, and major coverups. But in this particular time, as we witness the Impeachment of President Donald Trump, Russian propaganda is being touted as fact, and Trump’s betrayal of American Interests in the Ukraine is being denied by a forest of lies. Where are the philosophers? “Truth” is supposed to be the ultimate philosophical concept, but contemporary truth “theorists” admit themselves that they cannot explain how “truth” could have a substantive nature befitting its role in the news or even in everyday life. What gives? As a PA, I have done a little sleuthing, and discovered that the great philosopher Plato told a lie about truth, and its effects have reverberated through philosophy ever since. More than two thousand years later, 19th century philosopher Frederich Nietzsche uncovered its real nature but, unfortunately, fell for Plato’s lie again. Since that time many philosophers have been bewitched by Russell and Wittgenstein’s turn towards the analysis of language, constructing a Tower of Babel of interpretations of “Truth” based on semantics, logic, and grammar. Instead, truth is an ideal, necessitated by the behavioral reality of lying, and what we mean by the word gives us only a hint of the work that it’s actually doing. In fact, truth is a normative system, a lynch-pin that makes morality and human society possible.

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Fabrice Teroni

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In this essay the dangers of an overconsumption of history are investigated, and concerns are raised over the nature of philosophy and its role as a central part of man. Using material from Friedrich Nietzsche an argument is built, showing how we today suffer from a disease caused by a lack of attention to the present moment, and an overemphasis on truth rather than health. Through Ralph Waldo Emerson, Hindu myth, and Chinese thinkers a defense of surrendering to fate and being content with what happens is put forth, and with the help of Joseph Campbell, and his studies of mythology and anthropology, the value of religious unity and grand narratives receives a new interpretation. The overall style of argumentation is more artistic than analytical, and the intention of the essay is not to prove that the ideas within are true, but merely to show that they are available to anyone who are in need of them. Thus it is not to be approached as a polemic essay of continental philosophy, or as an objective presentation of analytical standards, but as a hybrid of both these traditions and the evocative tradition of Chinese philosophy.

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murat goc-bilgin

This essay aims to discuss the ideological aspects of memory loss as a reconstruction of personal and collective memory with reference to several Hollywood movies, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Memento and Everything Is llluminated. The essay explores the construction of memory within a network of power relations and the profound influence that the reproduction of memory has on the embodiment of personal identities. The unreliability of human memory has been a major issue in philosophical debates and works of art from early Greek philosophy to cyberpunk novels. Memory studies draw on a wide range of academic fields varying from neuroscience to political science, with an emphasis on prosthetic memories, identity and body politics, displaced cultural identities, and consumer culture. Often intermingled with collective narratives, memory is an ideological artifact or rather a form of language that can be institutionally manipulated or manufactured. The mass production of personal and collective memories further deprives human beings of control over their personal histories and identity constructions. In this regard, this article elaborates the formation, reinforcement, and reconstruction of memory in contemporary culture with particular references to the inclusion of hegemony, cultural politics, and identity politics in selected movies.

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It is a cultural axiom that we must remember the past or be condemned to repeat it. But as experience has shown us, at times there are things best left forgotten. The surety of vindication is reserved for the privileged. Most of us are not so lucky. To move on, to move forward, to keep going, to persevere – to do these things, forgetting (or at least not keeping something close in mind) has its uses. In a world of violence and trauma, forgetting is as elemental to human action and human life as is remembering. What if it is survivors who best know the benefits of forgetting and the dangers of collective remembering?

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My Happiest Memory Essay & Paragraphs for Students

As a kid, I have experienced many wonderful moments that bring me joy. However, one day stands out as my single happiest memory. In this essay, I will share the special details of this incredible experience that left such a happy impression on me. I hope you will understand why it means so much to relive this treasured memory through writing.

Table of Contents

Essay On My Happiest Memory

A perfect picnic.

It was a beautiful summer day when my friend group decided to get together for a picnic. We packed blankets, snacks, and activities, then headed to a shady spot under enormous trees at the park. (Topic sentence) Setting up, I remember giggling at silly inside jokes and anticipating treats like sandwiches and juice boxes. Bright sunshine dappled green grass as we played together carefree like the warmth never intended to leave our skin.

A (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); Memorable Treasure Hunt

To entertain ourselves, we devised an epic scavenger hunt around the whole park with riddles we had to solve to find various items to earn points. Racing through tulip patches and playgrounds with others cheering us on brought such glee. (Transition) My friend gave the best clue, hinting at a hidden spot near three oaks, which led me to discover a fake diamond ring – the round goes to me! (Topic sentence) Coming together for play lifted smiles as high as songbirds singing praise.

A Picnic Masterpiece

After working up an appetite with activities, we claimed a spot under willow branches hanging low as curtains to share our feast. Homemade cookies, fruits cut like flowers, and sandwiches cut into star shapes became art on our plates to savor and could not wait to taste. (Transition) Cool lemonade and giggles between bites kept shoulders touching in the shade of a tree aloft, a luminous sphere rising golden through leafy boughs overhead. (Topic sentence) Not a single drop of blue remained in the skies by the picnic’s end, yet its imprint stayed upon my heart.

Day’s End Delight

That afternoon was strung too perfectly with moments meant not to last, so basking in its beauty while daylight still embraced us seemed most wise. Slide down a grassy hill could lift any spirit skyward, then float back down, unraveling laughter’s melody once more. (Transition) Waving goodbye, holding memory near outlined in light spilled across the clouds, and I found refuge under knowing joy’s tune played on within. (Topic sentence) Though years may pass between, not a note could be forgotten of picnic played for keeps upon that summer’s sweetest day.

Cherished Gem

Simply reliving this happiest memory through writing brings my heart the same comfort felt among dear ones that dusk. The carefree play, shared treats, and bonding make it a treasured gem to hold near whenever the skies cloud over. Though many wonderful memories await, precious few may shine as bright as the favorite, happiest picnic’s glow. I am blessed to have such company and moments to revisit wherever life finds me.

Hello! Welcome to my Blog StudyParagraphs.co. My name is Angelina. I am a college professor. I love reading writing for kids students. This blog is full with valuable knowledge for all class students. Thank you for reading my articles.

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Memory Walk

Help fund vital research by joining over 100,000 walkers, united against dementia.

Sign Up For Memory Walk

What is memory walk.

Memory Walk is a sponsored walk for all ages and abilities to unite together to raise money to defeat dementia. The walks are spread across Malaysia and each walk will take on a different route through city.

This year over 110,000 people walk united, against dementia. We aim, with your help to raise over £9 million.

Choose your Memory Walk

Medicine Walk

Richard wagamese, ask litcharts ai: the answer to your questions.

Medicine Walk takes place on multiple timelines. The primary one is the kid ’s journey through the wilderness with his dying father, Eldon . Alongside this journey, the kid (Frank) recalls episodes from his childhood relationship with his father, and, most significantly, the father tells stories of his life. The father’s stories are all Eldon has to pass down to the kid before he dies, and they’re all the kid has of his mother, Angie , who died when he was born. As the kid considers the memories his father has shared with him, he finds it difficult to make a coherent story out of the dissonant pieces. When he gets home after Eldon’s death, he tells the old man his father’s stories as he resumes the rhythms of their life together. Through the kid’s process of hearing his father’s stories and tentatively incorporating them into his life, the novel suggests that no one’s stories are theirs alone, and that people’s self-understanding depends on the stories others tell.

Storytelling is essential to being a whole person. Eldon spends his life avoiding stories because they remind him of the pain in his past, but this not only costs him emotionally, it prevents him from opening up to other people. At one point, he describes stories as his “wound”—a symbol of “the sudden holes life can sometimes fall into.” As a child, he’d loved the stories his mother would tell him by firelight. But her stories also attract a lover who abuses her and pushes Eldon out of his mother’s life forever. After this, Eldon believes that stories only bring pain, and he begins holding his own stories inside, unspoken.

Only in his final days does Eldon tell Frank his own stories. When Frank complains that Eldon’s storytelling is a poor substitute for being around, Becka suggests that stories capture who a person really is—thus Eldon’s offering Frank part of himself. She tells Frank, “What he done was brave […] It's all we are in the end. Our stories.” In other words, telling a story is a much more courageous act than letting the truth stay buried—and by telling Frank his stories, Eldon is trying to make sure that Frank’s life is more whole than Eldon’s was.

Certain stories shouldn’t be told by just anyone. Bunky refuses to tell Frank what it’s Eldon’s responsibility to tell him. When Eldon first tells Frank he’s his father, Frank asks Bunky how this can be true. Bunky replies, “Gonna have to ask him, Frank. It ain't mine for the tellin’. Certain things when they're true gotta come right from them that knows them as true.” Even though withholding the truth of Frank’s parentage puts Frank at a disadvantage, Bunky believes it’s more important that truth come directly—from the person most responsible to tell it, in this case Eldon. Simply telling Frank the facts himself wouldn’t actually give Frank the full story he needs his father to tell in his own words. Similarly, Bunky wants Eldon to give Frank the story of his mother, Angie. Frank tells Becka, “I asked once. But I was told it was a father's job to do, tellin' me about her […] I'd look at women in town sometimes […] wonderin' if she was one of them […] an' I never knew.” Even though Bunky’s reticence pained Frank, it offered Eldon the opportunity to give Frank something Bunky couldn’t. Bunky seems to have understood that hearing the story from Eldon would bring greater healing and wholeness, in the end, than if he’d told Frank himself.

Angie begins to change Eldon’s view of stories, though he resists it, and he takes a long time to act on it. She notices that Eldon seems stuck inside himself and suggests that hearing a story “takes you back to […] a story you been carrying a long time.” In other words, stories can unburden a person, connecting them to others in healing ways. Before he dies, Eldon tells Frank that all he has left to give him is the story of Angie. He says he wishes he could get back “Every single wasted, drunken [year]. But I can't get 'em back. […] all's I got left is the story of her now.” Eldon’s openness suggests that he’s finally accepted Angie’s view of the power of stories. He understands that telling Angie’s story is a way of giving her to Frank, and also giving Frank what he's able to give of himself.

At the end of the novel, Frank tells Bunky the full story of Eldon’s life, since Eldon is no longer around to tell it for himself. This suggests that Frank has learned Becka’s lesson—that people are their stories, in the end—and has accepted that stories are a necessary part of healing. Having found greater wholeness from hearing Eldon’s stories, he now offers the same chance to Bunky, bringing things full circle.

Memory and Story ThemeTracker

Memory and Story Quotes in Medicine Walk

"I want you to take me out into that territory you come through. The one you hunted all your life. There's a ridge back forty mile. Sits above a narrow valley with a high range behind it, facing east […] Because I need you to bury me there."

The kid sat with the coffee cup half raised to his mouth and he felt the urge to laugh and stand up and walk out and head back to the old farm. But his father looked at him earnestly and he could see pain in his eyes and something leaner, sorrow maybe, regret, or some ragged woe tattered by years.

Truth was, he wanted nothing else because that life was all he'd known and there was a comfort in the idea of farming. He knew the rhythms of it, could feel the arrival of the next thing long before it arrived, and he knew the feel of time around those eighty acres like he knew hunger, thirst, and the feel of coming weather on his skin. Memory for the kid kicked in with the smell of the barn and the old man teaching him to milk and plow and seed and pluck a chicken. His father had drifted in and out of that life randomly[.]

It was the old man who had taught him to set snares, lay a nightline for fish, and read game sign. The old man had given him the land from the time he could remember and showed him how to approach it, honour it, he said, and the kid had sensed the import of those teachings and learned to listen and mimic well. When he was nine he'd gone out alone for the first time. Four days. He'd come back with smoked fish and a small deer and the old man had clapped him on the back and showed him how to dress venison and tan the hide. When he thought of the word father he could only ever imagine the old man.

Then he strode off and returned in a short time with mushrooms and greens and berries that he crushed up and fashioned into a paste. He gathered a clump of it on a stick of alder and held it out to his father.

"Sometimes I'll put some pine resin in with it if I got a pot and a fire. Makes a good soup. Lots of good stuff in there."

"Yeah. At first he brung me out all the time when I was small. Showed me plants and how to gather them. Everything a guy would need is here if you want it and know how to look for it, he said. You gotta spend time gatherin' what you need. What you need to keep you strong. He called it a medicine walk."

“Near as I can figure they're stories. I reckon some are about travelling. That's how they feel to me. Others are about what someone seen in their life. The old man doesn't think anyone ever figured them out."

"Ain't a powerful lotta good if ya can't figure 'em out."

The kid shrugged. "I sorta think you gotta let a mystery be a mystery for it to give you anything. You ever learn any Indian stuff?"

His father lowered his gaze. […] "Nah," he said finally. "Most of the time I was just tryin' to survive. Belly fulla beans beats a head fulla thinkin'. Stories never seemed likely to keep a guy goin'. Savvy?"

"I guess," the kid said. "Me, I always wanted to know more about where I come from."

"'What he done was brave. You know that, huh?"

"Done what?"

"Tellin' you. That took some grit."

"I don't think it'd take much grit to tell what ya already know."

"Maybe. But it sat in his gut a long time. Most'll just give stuff like that over to time. Figure enough of it passes things'll change. Try to forget it. Like forgettin's a cure unto itself. It ain't. You never forget stuff that cuts that deep."

His father moaned and the kid regarded him. "He don't seem much of a warrior to me." He sipped at the tea.

"Who's to say how much of anythin' we are?" Becka said. "Seems to me the truth of us is where it can't be seen. Comes to dyin', I guess we all got a right to what we believe."

"I can't know what he believes. He talks a lot, but I still got no sense of him. So far it's all been stories."

She only nodded. "It's all we are in the end. Our stories." She stood and put a hand on his shoulder and gave it a pat.

He thought about what Becka had said and worked at finding some pattern to the shards and pieces of history he'd been allowed to carry now. They jangled and knocked around inside him. It felt like jamming the wrong piece into a picture puzzle. Like frustration alone could make it fit the pattern. He cast a look back over his shoulder at his father, who seemed to be asleep, but he'd mumble when the horse's step over a rock or a root made him lurch in the saddle. When the kid looked back at the thin trail they followed he felt worn and makeshift as the trail itself.

"You're supposed to try to get to know me like a father knows a son," he said quietly.

"Jesus. I know that. Think I didn't want that? Think I'da asked you here if I didn't wanna get to that?"

"You lied. All you wanna do is drink and dance and break stuff."

"Wanted to see ya, was the point of it all."

"Well, you seen me."

"I'm your dad."

The kid shook his head. "Ain't got one. Never had one. Wouldn't know what it's supposed to mean 'cept what you show."

His father slammed the door closed. The smell of whisky was high in the air. The kid rolled down his window and backed the truck into the grass and then pulled out into the rut of the road. He took it slow, but the truck still bucked along. […] When they got to the gravel road the kid turned back the way they came and his father settled into his seat. "Happy birthday," he slurred.

The kid let out a breath long and slow and focused on the road. His father passed out halfway back to town.

He took the knife and held it under his ribcage and Jimmy stopped, his body going perfectly still as he stared at him over the rim of his hand. He closed his eyes. When he opened them again there was peace there and he nodded at him. The knife went in almost on its own and he twisted it like he was trained to do and leaned forward cheek to cheek with Jimmy and heard his last breath ease out of him.

Time was a thing he carried. It took him a long time after Korea to realize that. […] It rankled him, the unease, the slow creep of terror, like being hunted, tracked by some prowling beast invisible to the eye, recognized only by the sense of looming danger at his back. Then, always, time's dank shadow would fall over him again and sweep him into its chill. […] He spiralled downward and the measure of his days was the depth of the shadow itself. He wandered. He sought a place that carried no reminders, believing that a place existed that was barren of memory and recollection. But he bore time like sodden baggage.

“I never told no stories.”

“You should. When you share stories you change things.”

“Says you,” he said.

“If you told me one of your stories, you’d get lighter.”

“Don’t know as I have any worth the tellin’.”

She smiled at him and touched his leg. “You could let go of something maybe you carried for a long time. I could know more of you. Get bigger with the knowing of you.”

“I recall standin’ on the porch early one morning with a mug of coffee, looking out across the lake, an’ I felt like for the first time I could stand this life. I could settle. […] She brung that alive in me, Frank.

“It got me to wonderin’. Got me wonderin’ if time could make goin’ back to other things possible too. Goin’ back to other people, other places. My mother and such. Never ever thought them kinda thoughts before. Found myself wonderin’ if returnin’ was somethin’ a man could do, if ya could walk back over your trail and maybe reclaim things. They were odd thoughts but she hadda way of getting them into my head.”

“You were scared ya couldn’t be what ya had to be,” the kid said.

“More’n that,” his father said. “Scared I couldn’t be what I never was. I never told her about Jimmy, about my mother, even though she told me I could tell her anythin’. I was ashameda myself, Frank. Bone deep shamed. I was scared if I started in on tellin’ about myself I’d break down an’ I wanted to be strong for her. I really did. But layin’ there knowin’ how weak I really was brung on the dark in me. The dark that always sucked me back into drinkin’. I woke up to the belief that I’d always lose or destroy them things or people that meant the most to me cuz I always done that.”

He closed his eyes for a moment and when he looked down into the valley again he thought he could see the ghostly shapes of people riding horses through the trees. […]

He watched them ride into the swale and ease the horses to the water while the dogs and children ran in the rough grass. The men and women on horseback dismounted and their shouts came to him laden with hope and good humour. He raised a hand to the idea of his father and mother and a line of people he had never known, then mounted the horse and rode back through the glimmer to the farm where the old man waited, a deck of cards on the scarred and battered table.