One afternoon when I was eight years old and safely ensconced in the suburban apartment of my childhood, I found myself disenchanted with a rerun of “Doug.” On my way to change the channel on our television set, I stepped on a yellow-jacket that lay dying on the living room floor.
Yesterday afternoon, at age 20, I was in the middle of an episode of “Modern Family” when a honeybee drifted through my open window and hovered nonchalantly around my left shoulder.
Several events followed: I stifled a scream, dropped my laptop, almost fell off my bed, actually screamed and locked myself in my closet until my roommate swatted the intruder out of our room.
I’m constantly confronting my phobia around this time of year. Spring is the season of bees, wasps, yellow-jackets and other buzzing critters that come equipped with stingers designed, it seems, to dig their way into human flesh—my human flesh, to be more specific. While everyone else is frolicking in the newly glorious weather, I inevitably find myself running from tennis courts mid-point, abandoning meals unfinished on patio tables and abruptly ending conversations to make a mad dash for the nearest bee-free zone.
I’m not proud of my fear—it’s irrational at best and downright foolish when I consider the fact that I haven’t been stung since that fateful afternoon in second grade. But show me a wasp, and a decade-old memory floods my consciousness: the acute pinch in my heel, the yellow-jacket’s writhing body on the floor in front of my television, the dull throb in my foot that persisted into evening. I can’t forget the trauma of my first bee sting, and—haunted by that recollection—I am plagued with an incorrigible terror of all stinging insects.
According to the discussions we’ve had in my learning and memory neuroscience seminar this semester, my impression of this juvenile bee incident is adaptive. From a neuroscientist’s perspective, the versatility of the brain and its capacity to forge new connections is its greatest strength.
After all, an animal’s well-being lies in its ability to react and adjust to its environment; a student’s, in his talent for cramming textbook material during the 24-hour period before an exam. Remembering is essential to continued existence: We learn because if we don’t, we stagnate—and if we stagnate, we die.
OK, fine—all may not be quite so dire (though it might seem that way the night before my Stat 101 exam this Thursday), but memory inarguably plays a role in how we approach and analyze the world. In a Lockean sense, it could even be the key to self-identity: I am only what I recollect experiencing in the past, and my distinct set of remembrances is what allows me an exclusive self dissimilar to all other existing selves.
And in truth, sometimes it does seem to me that memory is all there could ever be to hold on to in a life of transience and uncertainties. But I’m not sure that it is always adaptive, or that I necessarily benefit from holding on to every vivid recollection currently in my mental file cabinet of experiences.
I admit to my fair share of wishing—à la “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”—that I could alter my memories to erase the painful periods of my life. For my friends who have survived emotional turmoil during this past year, I often suspect that the removal of previously hopeful delusions would ease the burden of disillusionment they now feel.
If only we could choose not to be affected by disappointments, or maybe if we could forget the injustices committed against us, would we emerge as happier, more fulfilled versions of ourselves?
“Eternal Sunshine” ends on a note of fatalism, implying that despite our best intentions to erase our mistakes, we will commit them again anyway, destined as we are to our own fatal flaws. Older, wiser “grown-ups” will undoubtedly also remind me that each difficulty is an opportunity for growth, a bettering experience that cannot be wiped out lest we stagnate (and die).
But I can’t help thinking that hardships might not be worth remembering if they only breed apprehension. In neuroscience class, we are told that learning is important because it makes us more receptive to environmental pressures and steels us against dangers. My friends will hopefully never be as devastated by their setbacks as they are now, young and inexperienced and in their early 20s.
As for me, I will never again be stung if I can help it. Perhaps this reassurance is worth the flood of animal panic I feel whenever I come in close proximity to a bee. Although I wonder at times what it would be like not to run in fear from anything that could potentially sting me.
Shining Li is a Trinity sophomore. Her column runs every Tuesday.
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