All I Want For Christmas
I haven’t bought into asking for anything for Christmas in quite some time. But today I woke up knowing what I want.
I have a few days remaining this year to ensure 2020 is a year worth remembering.
Even my friends have been spending more time creating Instagram and Facebook stories that are temporary -- as if they don’t want to remember this year at all.
I needed to remind myself of this because I am really taxing my energies these days. I have been quite open about not feeling the Christmas spirit this year. Despite doing the obligatory Christmas things, I haven’t found anything to put me in the Christmas mood.
Then I remembered Daniel Kahneman’s description of our two selves in Thinking, Fast and Slow: the experiencing self and the remembering self.
“The experiencing self is the one that answers the question: “Does it hurt now? The remembering self is the one that answers the question: How was it, on the whole? Memories are all we get to keep from our experience of living, and the only perspective that we can adopt as we think about our lives is therefore that of the remembering self.”
It makes me think about all I have read, heard and felt over the past few months -- and I know it does hurt now. That would be the experiencing self.
If I want my remembering self to take over, I can think about how the year was, on the whole. I know there were some amazing experiences that if seen together make for some amazing memories to keep.
Confusing experience with the memory is what Kahneman calls a “compelling cognitive illusion”.
You can choose to call that an illusion if you want, but I prefer the effects of the remembering self.
But just in case my remembering self takes too long, I am going to work on creating fun, beautiful and meaningful experiences to carry me through the holidays.
And that’s all I want for Christmas.
Resources
Kahneman, Daniel. Thinking, Fast and Slow. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011. Excerpt from Chapter 35: Two Selves.
Photo: Tammy Brimner/TLBVelo Photography
