Neuroplasticity is the constant rewiring and reshaping of the brain caused by experience, focused attention, and the explication of implicit memories. As psychologist Donald Hebb wrote, “Neurons that fire together wire together.”
Memories themselves are constellations of neural circuitry firing at once. They’re not tidy or unchangeable.
This means that by accessing memories, we change them. It’s as if each time you finished reading a book and snapped it shut, some words changed or disappeared. Should you read that book again, the changes may be imperceptible. Perhaps you read that book 100 times, and it tells a different story altogether. You will never experience the present moment, nor any memory, the same way twice.
“He thought each memory recalled must do some violence to its origins… What you alter in the remembering has yet a reality, known or not.”
~Cormac McCarthy, The Road (Book)
So, even though you’re probably your life’s best biographer, you’re still an unreliable narrator. This is where writing can help.
Writing creates a memory reservoir. It enables you to pool your thoughts, join the shifting versions of yourself across time, and surface a more resolved being. Past and present versions of you get to tell their side of the story, which can help you explicate deeply embedded and recurring thoughts. You can see how past experiences and present actions snap together like magnets, why this tends to cause that.
Writing is like dragging ugly little half-formed ghosts out of the dark of our minds to stand them naked in the sunlight. They can be examined, challenged, and mercifully laid to rest. This can help you construct a more coherent narrative of yourself (and your self-development). It can also remind you of your enormous capacity for change.
Making writing a habit pushes you to be more playful and attentive as you walk this earth. Writing is a perfect excuse to do something off-kilter, to experience and document something new.
Your memories aren’t just what happened to you. They’re what you tell yourself happened. Writing gives you some control over that telling, creates a paper trail of your consciousness.
“The paper has to function as a secondary memory to pool us together; it will end up knowing more of who we are than we ourselves can actively bring to mind in the moment.”
~Alain de Botton (The School of Life), How to Think Effectively (Book)
“Neurons that fire together wire together.”
~Donald Hebb
“…just by talking about the mind, you help develop it.”
~Daniel J. Siegel and Tina Payne Bryson, The Whole-Brain Child (Book)
