While living in Louisiana, we often drove long distances to church or community events. During those drives, my teenage sons or daughter got to pick the music we played on the radio.
Invariably, the alt rock station my oldest picked would play Def Leppard’s “Pour Some Sugar on Me” while my daughter’s favorite country western station would play “Meet in the Middle” by Diamond Rio. Whenever I hear either of those songs today, I am immediately transported back to our oak tree lined street and Acadian style house. For a few moments, I’m reliving those magical years again.
Music does that. It stimulates autobiographical memories. It helps us remember and relive those earlier times. It not only allows us to reminisce but it also reminds us that important events are not over — not as long as music can help us remember them, talk about them, share them.
A recent survey of college students and older adults by the Pew Research Center about futuristic inventions showed some dramatic differences between college age students and those over the age of 65. Apparently, college age students are three times more interested in time travel than seniors.
It seems once is enough for most of us. Even Michael J. Fox, the star of the 1985 hit movie “Back to the Future,” would not be interested in reliving earlier years in his life. Despite his more than 30 years of Parkinson’s disease, at age 64 Fox says he is willing to leave well enough alone.
There is a lasting power to good memories. They shape our sense of self, remind us where we’ve come from, guide our present actions, and contribute to our well-being. While we are not bound by them, they’ve helped make us who we are and continue to remind us about what is possible.
In some instances, memory loss occurs as we age, wiping out treasure reminiscences. However, music therapy can sometimes restore lost memories and familiar songs can assist in recall of past events, familiar loved ones, and even prior skills even improve cognitive functioning, according to a Harvard Health Bulletin.
Remembering the past, of course, is not the same as living in the past. Research has shown that viewing photos associated with specific positive autobiographical memories elevates our immediate mood and boosts our immune system.
“God gave us memories so that we might have roses in winter,” J.M. Barrie, the author of Peter Pan said. Despite aging, recall of certain fundamental aspects of past experiences remains remarkably stable over time for most people, says Penn State professor Nancy Dennis. She describes two separate categories that help us make better sense of memory, including “familiarity” — recalling the gist of a past experience–and “recollection” — calling up various details about the same.
Older adults do well at getting the gist right, but connecting names and faces or sequences of events lags as we age. Who was at a family picnic and who missed it? Who made the chicken salad and who didn’t eat any of it? These are likely better remembered by grandkids than grandparents.
While memories fade for everyone, Dennis notes, there are strategies for addressing this decline. For older adults, memory exercises that are less about recall of specific details and more about creating associational triggers may be the most useful.
Here’s how it all works. The brain stores information in a vast network of interconnected nodes allowing us to retain concepts, events, and sensory experiences. Associational triggers act as cues in activating these memories stored in the brain. These triggers, which can be anything from a specific smell to a particular song, prompt the retrieval process to spring into action.
Music is a powerful associational trigger. In addition to recalling past experiences, its melodious cues can channel everyday moods — while reminding us of days gone by and bringing them back to life again regardless of the distance whether it is driving home from the church around the corner or many miles, and years, away.
Memories, Karen Carpenter sang, “can be beautiful and yet, what’s too painful to remember we simply chose to forget.” We can, for the most part, control how and when we revive our memories. We train them to help us or discard them so they won’t hurt us.
Such memories give us ballast in day to day living and hope in the future.
While the past is worth remembering, most of us don’t want to go through puberty or pimples or all those other predicaments again. Since we somehow safely made it here — on the other side — we mostly want to stay where we are. We don’t want to go “back to the future.”
There is enough beauty here and now — in the present and even more on the horizon. And that’s enough for now.