What Moments Do We Remember Best? Lessons from Listening to Hundreds of Life Stories

Vance Crowe [00:00:06] Welcome back to the podcast. I'm glad you're here. Last week I did an interview with Sean Thon, who is a filmmaker of a movie that's coming out on October 10th called What Rhymes With Reason, but he also is the creative director for Legacy Interviews. So during our conversation, I was able to talk about Legacy Interviews in a way that I don't normally get to, and I got to have a level of introspection that actually prompted me to say things I'd never really thought about before. If you're a long time listener of the podcast, you know that I'm a big believer that oftentimes you don't know what you think until you say it out loud or you write it down. And I had one of those experiences during the interview and I've thought about it all week, so much so that I thought it would be worthwhile for me to share some of those thoughts with you. So we'll get back to doing interviews next week. I have a really, really great one coming up, but in the meantime, I wanted to share something with you because I think if you're like me, it might change you. Hearing what I've learned or discovered through these Legacy Interviews might offer you a way to approach life that's just a little bit differently than the way you would if you hadn't thought about this. So I'm just gonna lay it out there. Sean and I were talking about art, you know, he's an artist, and I asked him, you know, what kind of suffering did you have to endure in order to be able to create great art? I kind of have this hypothesis that it's suffering that, that people go through that allows them to create something new.

Vance Crowe [00:01:41] And this kind of plays out in Legacy Interviews when I'm interviewing somebody to tell stories about their life and about their, the change that they made throughout their life. It is very clear that people that maybe are 65, 75, 85, maybe even 95 years old, look back on their lives. And those moments of change immediately come to mind. If I ask a question, you know, tell me a time in your childhood when something happened that really changed you. They can think of something that they haven't thought of in 70 years immediately. Same thing about their career. Maybe they've even been retired for 10 or 20 years, but you ask them about some moment in their career where they were embarrassed or they had to overcome something that went wrong immediately. They know the answer and they don't just know the answer. They are able to recall it in an, in an amazing amount of detail. And I think that's what families love when they're going back and watching these interviews, because oftentimes they maybe knew about something that happened that kind of vaguely that that event occurred. But when they're hearing their loved one recall it in so much detail, they get to pull the lesson out of that experience. And I think one of the reasons that our brains are so good at remembering suffering and pain is because that's what teaches us so that we do change, and so that we make better decisions in the future. Now, the observation that I made with Sean was that that's not exactly the same about joyful moments.

Vance Crowe [00:03:19] Now, if I were to ask someone a vague question about, you know, tell me about a time when you were joyful. Tell me about a time where you were laughing. Uproariously, people that are really happy people, people that are really content with their lives look back on their lives. And you can see the thought process going. They kind of look up in the, and up into their minds, and they have a big smile on their face because they know, they felt all kinds of experiences of joy. They can think of, you know, the pride that they felt or the happiness, but the memory itself isn't as clear. So when we ask them questions about like, tell me about a vacation you took that was really impactful, they'll recall it. You know, we went to this place and, and it was a stretch for us, but we love doing it. And this is kind of generally what we were doing. But if you ask them, you know, tell me about the, the, the time on that trip when you were laughing or when, when this thing was happening, it's so much more vague in people's minds. Now, I'm a little bit hesitant to say this because you may imagine then that Legacy Interviews is an experience where people are just going back and recalling their stressful times or traumatic things that happened. But the reality is no, even though people are not remembering the joyful stories with as much clarity and they are remembering times of suffering and pain, the experience overall is really uplifting.

Vance Crowe [00:04:52] People are describing things that have happened and what they've overcome. And oftentimes they never took the time to go back and think about it in the past. So they actually never got a chance to verbalize and really internalize what happened to them, what they overcame. So this experience by allowing them to do it is really uplifting. But that doesn't change the fact that many of the joyful memories are hazy or fuzzy or really difficult to describe as a story. Now, I thought of this about a week ago. I think it's been an idea that's been rattling around in my brain for a while, but not until I said it out loud, did it really strike me? And I started over the last week wondering, well, what does this mean? You know, it's easy enough to draw off the line. Hey, our brains remember suffering, so they teach us things so that way we don't do it again. But what does that mean about the joy we experience in our lives? What should this change about the way that I approach life? And as I was sitting in the morning a few days ago, just about to go work out, I had it dawn on me that really joy is one of those things that you feel in the moment. And that as you have one of these brief shining beautiful things, one of these moments where you get to laugh or you get to see a smile on a person's face, or you get to feel the sense of pride of watching a child accomplish something, or your spouse, you know, be, be excited about something great that's happened, or you know, you, you something good has happened.

Vance Crowe [00:06:35] These are rare moments and that the only way that we get to experience them is in the present. And that this is why it is so important to be awake in your life because you will be woken up by pain. There's no question about it. You are going to be woken up. If you've been asleep at the wheel, you haven't been taking care of what you need to take care of, you're gonna get woken up. But with joy, it's possible to sleep through it. It's possible to think, oh, this is going so well. What I should do is get out my camera and try and take a photograph of it. Or I should be trying to share this with people, put it out on social media. Do something in order to capture it more. But the truth is, when you go back to look at that photograph, you may feel a little bit of warmth and a little bit of smile about whatever it is that you posted, but it's not gonna be the same. The real time that you get to experience joy, the real time that you get to take something away from it is in the moment. And so for me, what this means is I'm going to try and I have tried all week to be way more observant. When do I hear laughter? What can I allow that to, to change my mood? When do I see a child, one of my daughters solving some problem and feeling so proud that they put the round block through the round hole?

Vance Crowe [00:08:06] You know? And really celebrating that and noticing when my wife comes home and she's excited about having helped a patient overcome something difficult and she's just excited. Joy is one of those things that unless you are truly conscious of it, unless you wake yourself up and observe that you are feeling it and experiencing it, it can pass you by. And even if you do experience it, even if you soak it all in, you're not trying to soak it in so you can remember it sometime in the future because there's no guarantee of that. It's just not the way our minds work. So whatever you're doing today, tomorrow, the next week, the next month, I want you to really try and use the feeling of joy and

Guest [00:08:54] Happiness to wake you up and not to try and capture it so that that way you can bottle it for the future, but to say, ah, what is going on here? Let me absorb this. Let me be engaged in it. Let me laugh more loosely. Let me be more joyful. Because the present moment is all that you have with it. Alright, I'm gonna jump off here. Thank you so much for allowing me to share this thought. If you have any thoughts about it, just go ahead and email me Vance at Legacy Interviews dot com. If you are interested in having me sit down with one of your loved ones, or even you to record your life stories, to kind of think back on those moments of change and to capture the stories that really make up your family history, go to Legacy Interviews dot com. And if you have not watched the interview that I did with Sean Thon, I highly, highly recommend that I have gotten tons of positive feedback about that and his movie, what Rhymes With Reason is out in theaters nationwide for one night only on October 10th. I know I am gonna go to the theater to see it and I'm excited about it. He's an exceptional observer of the human condition and how things really impact people. So I'm excited to see his full length movie. I've seen some of the movies he made in college, but seeing a full length motion picture is really exciting. So what rhymes with reason on October 10th? Go look it up and I'll put some something in the show notes about where you can get tickets.

Guest [00:10:30] Alright, we will be back next week with an exceptional interview with a man named Ioif. Talk to you later.