“Remembering” some of my vacations, rather two-day holidays, way back when I first bought my Canon Rebel G SLR camera; I was spending most of the time in taking photographs than “experiencing” the vacations. Invariably, my wife would be searching for me as I try to find a good spot for a photograph. Eventually, ending up ruining part of the experience of the vacation and the quality time with my wife.

These are the thoughts that first came to my mind when I was watching, and also listening, to this great TED lecture “The riddle of experience vs. memory” by Daniel Kahneman (won 2002 Nobel Prize for Economics)

The key concept that he elaborates is that happiness is a complex aspect and it is impossible to think straight about happiness due to some cognitive traps. One such cognitive trap is the confusion between experience and memory. He says,

Basically it’s between being happy in your life, and being happy about your life or happy with your life. And, that the key reason for this confusion is that we might be thinking about ourselves in terms of two selves:

1. “Experiencing Self” – the one that lives in the present 
2. “Remembering Self” – the one that keeps score, and maintains the story of our life.

He provides several examples and results of experiments that highlight the dominance of remembering self in our lives. One question or a “thought experiment” (as he says) that made me thinking was regarding vacations:

Why do we put so much weight on memories relative to the weight that we put on experiences? 

“So I want you to think about a thought experiment. Imagine that for your next vacation, you know that at the end of the vacation all your pictures will be destroyed, and you’ll get an amnesic drug so that you won’t remember anything. Now, would you choose the same vacation?“

Uh, interesting dilemma; difficult to imagine choosing such a vacation that does not leave any memories. This probably is true for adults but a kid wouldn’t find it difficult to choose such a vacation, which I realized when I asked my 11 year old son the same question.

One key point Daniel Kahneman makes about vacations is that the time consumed in memories is very minimal; in his case around 1.5 hours of moments consumed on his vacation in 4 years after one of his best vacations. This is a debatable point as we use memories (& photographs), however minimal number of moments that they consume, to share to our loved ones and friends and, to also at times “re-live the experience” ….. Yeah, lots of value for memories, we think and we anticipate! That’s why he says that “Remembering Self” is a dominating force in our lives.

What about you? Would you choose such a vacation where you are guaranteed to have a great experience but no memories to carry forward? If not, would you then choose another vacation that has lesser rating of experience, say 60% of the great one, in bargain for memories to keep?

(Coming back to my vacation, my wife did not know at that time that a major part of my plan for that vacation was to “experience” taking photographs with my camera! :-))