On the difference between remembering 'what you know' and 'who you are'

It's funny, the things you learn on a ship.

A lot of the time you find you learn more in the spaces in between things happening than you ever will when life is happening so fast you barely have time to think about it. I suppose that's not wholly surprising, since thinking and learning go pretty hand-in-hand.

My brain has been in over-drive lately, been inspired by the thoughts and actions of the people around me, been connecting the dots between disparate concepts and dispositions.

I'm finding that sailors are some of the wisest, most insightful and inspirational people I have ever met, and you wouldn't guess it with their thick New England accents and their potty mouths and bad jokes and their Glenn Beck radio-listening. But I try to keep my eyes and my mind open, and what I see is this:

I really have so much respect for the profession of engineering because I have observed two things, in particular-

1) Engineers are awesome because when they see something is broken, they automatically start thinking about how to fix it. They are natural problem-solvers. You might think this is not a big deal but if you walk around a while and listen, you will notice that most other people are problem-finders. The thought struck me when I mentioned I was low on funds, waiting for my first paycheck. Within the evening three of the engineers had dug into their wallets and handed me $40 without thinking about it and Brenden the 2nd mate, knowing I smoke cigarettes had tossed me a few packs and asked if it were enough to tide me over.

They're nice guys, but to me it was more than that. I was thinking today about this night I had in New York City about this time last year. For reasons I won't get into, I wasn't allowed into a club in the meat-packing district and I watched through tear-streaked make-up as each one of my friends walked in without me, eventually leaving me alone on the street. I was just thinking, if I were broke, if I didn't have money for a pack of cigarettes I'm positive the reaction from them would have been more along the lines of responding 'Oh man. That sucks.'

Anyway this is why engineers are awesome. You could know everything about being cool, and know about all the cool things and be where the coolest things are happening, but you will never be as cool as the person who sees something needs fixing and fixes it, without thinking about 'what's in it for me'.

2) This is something I feel like I wouldn't ever really understand if I hadn't spent so much time working on a ship, with a crew. For the record, I have lived a relatively lower-middle-class life. Everything is about being more than what you are, having a brighter future than your parents had, and about becoming someone important. We live in a society where being 'famous' seems to have greater clout than being 'useful'... and somehow we've come to believe that egomaniacal, self-centered and self-preserving behavior is normal... that life is a process of trying to get the rest of the world to realize how awesome you are.

No wonder most of us feel so lost, and unhappy.

One of my friends from the City said to me earlier this year, 'I really love that you love hanging out with sailors.'

It is true, and I know that to most people it seems strange that a girl like me, who has spent most of her lives in cities, has an erroneous degree in neuroscience from the University of Spoiled Children, really prefers to spend her time in the company of blue-collar men who spend two-thirds of their lives away from their families, who work seven days a week under appalling and hazardous conditions, who have no manners and don't give a shit where you went to college or how many books you've read.



But it's true. I REALLY love hanging out with sailors.

The days after work when we all go out for beers and oysters, I lean back and think about how lucky I am, to be around a group of people who are TOTALLY relaxed because they know they've worked as hard as they could work that day.

The thing about working on a ship is, you never wonder where you belong because you always have a purpose. You are always part of a greater whole, which is incomplete without you and the things you have been called upon to do. You realize that in order for a system to function effectively and efficiently, each of it's individual components have to WORK, and that includes you.

This type of work cultivates a particular kind of person, a person who understands two things, at the same time: that they are just a small part of a greater system, and that the system cannot function as effectively without them.

It seems like a pretty simple concept until you realize how many people question their self-worth and usefulness on a daily basis. I know I did.



________________________________________________________________

But this isn't really what I intended to write about.

I had a really great night the other night, I'd had too much coffee earlier in the day so I had a little extra energy and decided to spend some time up in officer's lounge doing arts and crafts (I'm making a surprise present for someone I love) and watching movies, but when I turned on the TV the channel was on PBS (bless PBS) and they were broadcasting the Charlie Rose Brain Series, which is basically a think-tank of brainy people talking about brains.

I thought this was nice, since I studied brains in school and I quite like them so I decided to watch this, instead and anyway it made me feel real smart like I was a brainy person watching brainy people talk about brains.

It's been almost SIX YEARS since I graduated from college, which kind of blows my mind because I thought I would be a lot smarter by now than I actually am. I also realized when found a copy of my dissertation and tried to read it (Titled: Actions of Hexomethaniosulfonate Reagent on Positions alpha-562 and beta-464 of Neural Glycine Receptors Modulation of Alcohol Permeability) ...that for the most part, I have completely forgotten everything I've learned (read: I don't understand what that means anymore, either).

The reassuring thing is, although I can't remember how to sound smart I know I am still becoming wiser- because I understand that a large part of growing up is knowing what's worth remembering, and what's okay to forget.

The topic discussion on the series that evening was Alzheimer's, aging and memory loss. Not surprisingly, they were using H.M. as an example, who is the Neuroscience World's most famous case study. You can read more about him, and who he is here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HM_(patient)

I remembered learning about him, and was fascinated by the deep sense of tragedy I felt when empathizing with the concept of not being able to learn anything new.

Studies of H.M. were key to the discovery that memory has a really complicated and non-localized way of being stored.. because of him we know that the human mind is capable of learning not just in the traditional sense, but also on a purely subconscious level, and also purely on a physical level.

In short, it led to the discovery that as you mature and develop, who you become is not only the product of what you remember, but also the product of what you don't remember learning.

In neuroscience they seperate these types of memory into two categories: 'declarative' memory and 'non-declaratvie' memory. Declarative memory is what we typically think of when we think of memory- the recall of people names, places, locations, chronology and history. When we say, 'my memory is not so good' this is the kind of memory we're talking about.

'Non-declarative memory' is understandably a little harder to describe because it is the kind of memory that is more subjective in nature, its memory stored in the more evolutionarily primitive parts of our brain and it's much more instinctively rooted. When something scares you and you don't know why... when the more you practice, the less you have to think about it.. this is non-declarative memory.

The difference between the two was illustrated by a scenario where a man is attacked by a large dog as a child. On a conscious level, the man remembers, 'When I was a child, I was attacked by a large dog, so I know to stay away from large dogs.' The memory of the attack is a learned response- it's something he remembers, and something he knows about himself.

Maybe the same man suffers an injury and he's rendered a retrogade amnesiac; he doesn't remember his name, much less what happened to him when he was six. He takes a walk around the block, passes a man with a pit bull and is frozen with a totally irrational sense of terror. In psychology we call this 'Pavlovian conditioning'.. a sort of 'learning without knowing.'

... but it was the way the woman in the interview put it, that really stuck with me. She said, 'It's the difference between what you know, and who you are.'


This kind of made me realize, that it's useful to acknowledge not only the difference between those two things... 'What you know'... and 'who you are'.... but their similarities... namely that these things are LEARNED and therefore change with experience... regardless of whether or not you're aware of it.

With this in mind I feel as if it's inadequate to use the excuse that 'it's just who I am' in order to justify your own behavior. I really feel as if identity is something which develops over time... not just as a discovery of the qualities you have possessed for as long as you remember, but as a discovery that you have the choice to abandon the qualities which no longer serve you, this world, or the people you love.

I think 'who you are' is actually really something you can learn, by allowing the experiences in your life to challenge your so-called instincts and through the growing realization that finding yourself, and knowing who you are is not necessarily just a process of excavation. Self-discovery is a dynamic process... and even if you knew who you were yesterday, you are no longer that person today.

It's an intimidating notion unless you remember that wisdom is about choice and therefore about freedom. About remembering and forgetting. Self-discovery could be re-defined more as a sort of 'self-creation'... as you mature, hold onto certain ideas and let go of others you are creating a new entity every day, which interacts with the world in a different way.

You are the creator of yourself. No one is responsible for you, and who you are, but you.

We live in a paradoxical universe where the only constant is change itself. It can be disconcerting, when you have nothing to grab ahold of and particularly disconcerting when we find it difficult to grab a hold of anything even within our own identities.

But I'm optimistic.

In a universe where self-knowledge is perpetually out of my grasp I have this thing, an imagination, a godliness, a part of me that always has a vision of who I could be.

And I have a feeling that it's that part of me. I have a feeling that THAT is who I am.