Unlike God, we are finite and sinful.

And our limitations and sinfulness apply even to our memory, “the faculty by which the mind stores and remembers information” (Concise Oxford English Dictionary).

Lesson 1: Your memory might not be as accurate as you think.

See Oliver Sacks, “Speak, Memory,” The New York Review of Books (February 21, 2013).

This stands out:

Frequently, our only truth is narrative truth, the stories we tell each other, and ourselves—the stories we continually recategorize and refine. Such subjectivity is built into the very nature of memory, and follows from its basis and mechanisms in the human brain.

Last month I shared that article with a sharp biblical scholar in his mid-60s, and he replied, [Read more…] about How Reliable Is Your Memory? 3 Practical Lessons

Jenni and I are listening to the seven Harry Potter books again, and it’s even better the second time.

While listening to book 5, this dialogue—in which Hermione is explaining to Harry and Ron how Cho Chang is feeling—made us laugh again:

“Well, obviously,

• she’s feeling very sad, because of Cedric dying.
• Then I expect she’s feeling confused because she liked Cedric and now she likes Harry, and she can’t work out who she likes best.
• Then she’ll be feeling guilty, thinking it’s an insult to Cedric’s memory to be kissing Harry at all [Of course, I think that such recreational, self-gratifying, romantic involvement between immature teens is foolish, but that’s not the point of this post!],
• and she’ll be worrying about what everyone else might say about her if she starts going out with Harry.
• And she probably can’t work out what her feelings toward Harry are anyway, because he was the one who was with Cedric when Cedric died, so that’s all very mixed up and painful.
• Oh, and she’s afraid she’s going to be thrown off the Ravenclaw Quidditch team because she’s been flying so badly.”

A slightly stunned silence greeted the end of this speech, then Ron said, “One person can’t feel all that at once, they’d explode.”

“Just because you’ve got the emotional range of a teaspoon doesn’t mean we all have,” said Hermione nastily, picking up her quill again. (ch. 21, formatting added)

Listening to this coincided with another book Jenni and I were both listening to:

Daniel Goleman. Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ. 10th Anniversary ed. New York: Bantam, 2005.

I really needed to read Emotional Intelligence because I don’t have very much of it. My wife’s EQ, on the other hand, is off-the-charts genius-level, yet she read the book twice because she enjoyed it so much. She says that it has helped her understand everyone around her so much better.

Her skills sure come in handy when we’re together with other people because afterwards I can ask her what really happened. I tend to hear words; she tends to read people. (Yes, I’m jealous.)