The Two Selves

I first came across this concept in the book "Happy" by Derren Brown and after that it seemed to pop up everywhere. This idea of "two selves". (It is commonly attributed to Daniel Kahneman,the author of 'Thinking fast and slow'.)

Our memories and our experiences. These make up our two selves i.e, ' Experiencing self' and 'Remembering self'.

Our Experiencing self is our moment to moment experiences whereas our Remembering self is the memories we have of those moments. Alright, but why does it matter?

The Experiencing self is what we give most importance to when judging our state of happiness. Am I happy doing this now? Whereas the Remembering self is how you remember that experience. Very often, as you might have noticed, the two do not coincide.

The Experiencing self is time conscious and feels every emotion strongly, whereas the Remembering self focuses on the quality of the experience and the sense of time is grossly varied.

For example, imagine watching a movie. You love it, you love the feelings it's making you feel, you love the characters and everything is going great but suddenly the movie ends, in a horrible fashion, you absolutely hate the ending, all your favorite characters die for no reason.

Now, when you think back on it, the ending is the part that stands out most, the part that affected you the most.

This is because, the remembering self is focused on the quality of emotions we feel. It remembers most vividly what you felt strongly about. But it also takes other factors into consideration, it is older and thus wiser:

Recall studying hard for an exam despite not wanting to, at the time, your Experiencing self might have hated it but after you passed your exams, you look back on it proudly and pat yourself on the back, it doesn't seem so bad after all. And just like that, your remembering self converts an uncomfortable experience into something you feel good about. It forgets how long the experience was, it focuses on the outcome.

What might make you feel good at the moment may seem not so good when you look back on it. Sometimes, asking yourself if your future self will thank you for it can make all the difference.

In the end, we judge the life we lived by our Remembering self, but there is no Remembering self without our Experiencing self. So experience life, be present in every moment and keep your Remembering self smiling.