Memorality

So I just finished reading "Remember Me" by Sophie Kinsella. It's about a girl who loses three years of her memory. She wakes up after a car accident in 2007 thinking it's 2004, and she's surprised by everything that had changed in her life - including her personality. All the sudden she looks perfect, is married to a millionaire, and is the boss of her department, but she had become completely hard and driven and she lost all her friends. Now she is her old self again, the person she was three years ago, trapped in the life of the person she has become.

On the topic of amnesia, it reminded me of another book: "See Jane Run" by Joy Fielding. (This book was amazing!) The story begins suddenly with a woman who has no idea who she is, what she is doing, or why she is doing it. She has no memories, no knowledge of her identity or opinions. She has no idea why her dress is covered with blood or why her pocket is full of hundreds. Eventually she is recognized and reunited with her husband, who is a stranger to her, but no less than she is a stranger to herself. Her husband begins to point out her strange behaviour and how she typically would have reacted to situations - with impatience, temper, and rudeness - and she is taken aback because that no longer seems natural to her.

These stories make me think about how our personality is created by our circumstances. The situations that we are in affect who we become. And if we were to no longer know about those situations, if we did not have to live in response to them, we find ourselves to be different people. Personality is dependant on memory. Interesting.