Early College Wisdom and the Value of “Moments”
“Live and learn, die and forget it all.” This was a phrase I first heard from a close friend during my college days. At the time, before the internet was in everyone’s pocket, I didn’t have the luxury of simply looking up where it came from. In fact, I never encountered the saying anywhere else, and I’m not sure I’ve heard it since. Perhaps I could satisfy my curiosity now by searching for its origin, but why dilute that cherished memory with extra data? Sometimes, life really does boil down to a handful of vivid snapshots in time, and this phrase is one of those snapshots for me.
You see, I can connect that era—the late-night study sessions, the cheap pizza, and the idealistic conversations—to these words and, ultimately, to the friend who first spoke them. Despite what we might fantasize or “hallucinate,” how much of life do we really remember, anyway? As you might know from my previous articles, I’m not an AI expert, just an enthusiastic observer. That curiosity extends to how we humans behave—particularly how we store and recall our experiences. While this area is most likely well-studied by psychologists and neurologists, I want to explore a sliver of it from a more everyday vantage point.
Think of your college or high school days. You might recall your favorite hangout spot or the faces of a few friends, but many other details have faded. Our memories are selective and imprecise. As neuroscientist and memory researcher Elizabeth Loftus has shown, our recollections can be surprisingly malleable. Yet, there’s something about those potent moments—like hearing a friend say, “Live and learn, die and forget it all”—that remain deeply lodged in our mind, even if they’re not entirely accurate. Maybe we romanticize them or even fill in some blanks along the way, but that’s part of how we form our sense of self.
The Strange Beasts of Human Memory and LLMs
In recent years, we’ve seen the meteoric rise of Large Language Models (LLMs)—those AI-driven tools that seem to know everything and yet sometimes falter in the strangest ways. They’re trained on vast amounts of text—songs, books, poems, and random internet musings. In theory, an LLM fed every recorded song could be a master at creating new lyrics or suggesting chord progressions. However, if you ask it to recite the exact lyrics of a specific song, it might get close, but it often won’t be perfectly accurate. That’s because it’s not a straightforward database designed to retrieve verbatim information; it’s a model that generates text based on learned patterns.
Strangely, this dynamic can be seen as a good analogy for the human mind. Our brains are trained on everything we see, hear, touch, taste, and smell. Yet, when asked to recall the precise details of an event—say the clothes someone was wearing five years ago at a birthday party—most of us can’t do it. Sure, there are exceptions, like people with photographic memories, but the average person forgets more than they recall. Over time, memories morph. Sometimes a friend or a photograph helps fill in the gaps, but even then, we’re left wondering which parts are real and which we’ve invented ourselves.
Yet humans do something LLMs don’t typically do: we collect and treasure specific moments. We attach emotions to our memories—whether they bring tears, laughter, or warm nostalgia. Emotions color these snapshots in a way cold, calculated AI models don’t (at least not yet). Our flawed, piecemeal recollections are frequently the ones that shape who we become. And ironically, much like an old photograph exposing the truth, a video recording of a special occasion can sometimes break the spell of what we thought happened—only to reveal that we’ve been mixing real details with a pinch of wishful thinking.
I have a personal story that illustrates this perfectly. While dining at Maloney & Porcelli (that has since closed its doors permanently) in NYC with family, I sent a photo to a longtime friend who was a huge fan of the place, just to let him know I was thinking of him. The surprise came when he remotely paid for our entire bill, from thousands of miles away. I remember him texting, “You of all people deserve to be treated with a surprise!” I also recall that he said something about how I’m usually the one footing the bill for others, so I rarely get to enjoy being on the receiving end. But here’s the twist: when I looked up the text message later, the actual words he wrote were slightly different. Did he say the rest on the phone later? Did I fill in the gaps with my own interpretation? It doesn’t truly matter. My imperfect memory can’t diminish the heartfelt generosity of that moment. Whether I got every syllable right isn’t the point; what matters is the emotional resonance it still carries. I will forever carry this one with me.
Harnessing Imperfect Memory to Shape the Future
So, why dwell on all these reflections and examples of imperfect memory? Because when you realize that you won’t remember everything in life, you also realize there’s a special opportunity: you get to decide which moments you hold onto most. You can deliberately collect new, powerful memories in the present and even reframe old ones from the past. This perspective aligns with concepts like Tony Robbins’s “neuro-associative conditioning,” which suggests that we can train ourselves to shift our emotional responses and mental associations toward more empowering stories.
The critical question is: If we only actively remember a small slice of life, why fill it with negativity, anger, or fear? Why let months—or even years—of time become weighted by a single bad moment? Instead, we can consciously choose to shape our recollections, highlighting positive experiences and learning from the negative ones without allowing them to define us. Some psychologists argue that actively reshaping memories might lead to ignoring valuable lessons. I argue we need to reshape those memories to make the lessons valuable.
The next time you catch yourself ruminating on a past mistake or a disappointing event, remind yourself that your memory is not an unerring documentary film; it’s more like a constantly evolving highlight reel. You get to direct what goes into it. By focusing on moments of kindness, humor, growth, and love, you effectively “hack” your brain into moving forward with a lighter emotional load. And if you ask me, that’s a far more beautiful way to go through life.
In the end, what do we really have if not a collection of memories—imperfections and all? The vast majority of our experiences will fade away, but the ones we hold dear can continue to light our path forward. The heart that touched my heart at Maloney & Porcelli serves as a reminder that sometimes it’s okay to get the details wrong, as long as the spirit of the story remains strong. Let that be a lesson for you, too: Embrace the magic of your imperfect memory, and use it to build a future that’s worth remembering.