Emotional memory.

Life is chaotic at the moment... Uni's been demanding, never mind everything else going on at the moment! *sigh* But we get through it, don't we? While still having some time to breathe and really get enjoy it... and to blog!

At the beginning of this week, my Theatre and Performance Studies lecturer was talking about emotional memory; the way we can relate to characters on stage by drawing from experience within our own lives. It made me wonder how close to every emotion we have each come to throughout our lives.

It's not possible to have experienced every single thing that life offers, even when we do experience a million different feelings and thoughts in a day. But such empathy can come from within us when it comes to regarding all kinds of experiences that others may go through in life; we just go through these things our own way.

For example, in acting, if you have to play a character who has murdered someone, and feels a deep sense of regret afterwards, how would you know how that feels? Surely (well, hopefully!) you haven't actually murdered anyone, but many of us would have had some feeling of regret in our lives that we can draw from... You broke your sister's doll when you were younger, or cheated on your 9th grade maths test... You know what I mean?

And each day we form new experiences, and feelings, and emotions, which constantly add to our emotional memory, whether we're conscious of it or not. These things are what push us to understand each another further and even more importantly, to further understand ourselves.

Which then makes me think, is there such thing as regret? I know I mentioned it before as an example, but I mean it now in the sense that, no matter what the experience was, was it not what you wanted in that exact moment of your life? And if you could go back to the past to erase something you regret, would you go through with it? Becuase isn't that part the building of your emotional memory, and has made you the person you are?*


*That question probably seems contradictory to my example of the murderer, but as if you wouldn't feel regret for committing murder! Unless you're a psychopath. Anyway, that's such a tangent!