Invented realities can deceive but they cannot replace the truth
“A time to take stock”, Jeremy Springer draws upon his experience as an insurance evaluator to offer some valuable lessons to those who are preparing for retirement. (This is an extract of his article published in The Meredith Financial Times).
For the past 23 years I’ve been involved in a lot of difficult case studies as a life insurance evaluator. My job is to analyse unusual accidents and determine their cause and intent. It’s a taxing job and a lot rests on my decision — the dignity of the distraught family and a large payout. Over the past few years I’ve seen a distinct rise in the number of suicide cases among retirees.
Evidently, as they are on the cusp of retirement they look back at their life often with disastrous consequences.
One retiree, Joe Colby, a likeable salesman, on the cusp of retirement had a most unusual accident which had a terrible impact upon his loved ones.
So retirees, please take note. If you think you can hoodwink yourself and others, think again. There is a lot at stake and it’s not just the money.
The latest research shows that our memories, and the way we evaluate and rethink our experiences are not fixed. Our ability to review our past, over time, has a cumulative impact on the present and the future and on our stability. It influences how we approach death.
Sometimes memories can deceive and the chain of memories can invent an altered reality, leading us completely astray. In many worst case scenarios, we can conceivably concoct an entire parallel reality.
According to Professor David Gallo, psychologist and director of the Memory Research Laboratory at the University of Chicago, we have a “lot of control over our own memories.” And experiments show that after we experience something, we retell it which allows our “brain another chance to encode it.” The way we consistently review these episodes influences our lived realities in a way like a continual “remembered present”.
From a symbolic perspective, we look at the past like a slide show; we are the presenters or narrators rearranging the slides into a presentable order, and deleting those that do not fit, either because they are undesirable or because they fail to make an impact. As Gallo explains every time we arrange one slide or image we are also encoding that memory, the traces of which vary in intensity over time.
What happens if our recall is selective?
Often we invent entire parallel slide shows that may make a favourable impact, but they have little bearing on reality. For example, every time we bring out our family slides and everybody looks at the show and reminisces we are selectively “rehearsing that information and reconsolidating it”. Those that make an impact of course will be saved for the next occasion.
As it turned out, the family slide show of Joe Colby’s life turned out to be a great show; the salesman was the star performer, with Linda, the co-star, as faithful as they come, and his sons, the basketball prodigies. There was a lot of fanfare. The great salesman was apparently breaking company records; he was a larger than life personality and not unlike, the pied piper calling the tune, he commanded a good following among his junior staff, as well as among, of course, his family who actively helped him cultivate the image. He believed he could pick up the phone at the age of 60 and still make sales. He believed he could sell his merchandise to millions around the country. He believed he could crack a joke and bring a wry smile to his sycophants.
And so retirees, reaching this stage of life, who wouldn’t give priority to our glowing past achievements? Indeed, hopefully, we can all look back at significant milestones in our life and arrange them in such a way that they present a proud and dignified picture of someone who has achieved what they set out to do in life. It’s a wonderful thing to reach our goals.
But what if these glowing achievements are only partially true? What if we have conveniently deleted slides that do not fit the presentation?
After all, to use another symbol, it’s as if the software in our brains is being re-programmed to fit with our own personal desires and fantasies.
As retirees, we are frequently cutting and pasting our best slides and deleting others. This leads to distortions, biases and misrepresentations. Sometimes we fall for it; sometimes others fall for it, but at the end of the day, we are doing ourselves irreparable harm.
That was the case with Joe. He seemed to have completely forgotten his failures and his slide show was a glowing account of himself. What his slide show failed to recognise was that Joe was a man in free-fall. The deleted slides, lurking in “his deleted box” contradicted his personal story.
As psychologists such as Sigmund Freud remind us, repressed memories have a “compulsion to repeat”. They inevitably come back to haunt you, often in deceptive and contradictory ways; frequently in traumatic ways.
The fact that Joe was nearing bankruptcy, that he was completely irrelevant to the company, a fraud to his son, and a liar to his wife was too much to bear. The seeds did not bear fruit; he worried about peeling the apple and spitting out the core. Joe’s death in a car crash was obviously suspicious.
And just to diverge a little. Joe’s free-fall reminds me of my mother’s vanishing grip of reality as she succumbs to the creep of old-age weariness. She, like Joe, seems to grasp a kernel of reality and then follows pathways created by stored memories in the software of her brain that are largely random. She picks up and fits virtually anything into her mental slide show with absolute conviction. People from her younger days, such as her long-dead parents often feature in her shows about the present, and she reinvents characters in order to confirm her best moments, greatest adventures and conquests. She is a mother like no other. Certainly not like mine.
So retirees, the best defence against the creep of old-age weariness and the angst-ridden fear of temporariness is to be as true to self as we can. Don’t just keep the gloss; and don’t let the unpleasant memories fade away in the deleted box of memory. Confront them, deal with and celebrate them. Remember the Shakespearean maxim “to thine own self be true.”
Joe was just your average Joe; he could be anyone out there taking stock, realising that one’s life may not be as great, as rewarding and as successful, as it ought to be. Resist the temptation to pretend and to create a slide show where we become best performers of the greatest show of all time. There are often no survivors.
I advised the company. “Likely suicide, no payout.”
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