An Act of Reconstruction

I read a book recently called The Year of Fog by Michelle Richmond. One of the themes in the book is the reliability of memory, about how we often are unable to remember the small details that matter the most. This book explores the boundary of memory, a topic that we have talked a great deal about in class this year, and one that I find to be increasingly interesting the more I learn about it. Here's a passage from the book:

"A common misconception is that memory is like some kind of computer that stores and retrieves information. The truth is, memory is an act of reconstruction. Every time we remember an event, we piece together rough drafts of the of the event based on our lifetime of experiences... Memory is not unlike a photograph with multiple exposures. One event is layered on top of another, so that it is impossible to distinguish the detail of the two. The older we get, the more multiple-exposure memories we have. Temporal relationships become elastic. As the years progress and we experience more and more, the mini-narratives that make up our lives are distorted, corrupted, so that every one of us is left with a false history, a self-created fiction about the lives we have led" (Richmond 162-63).

The idea that my memory is not a reliable way to remember the past, that what I know may not be the truth, that my memory could fail me when I need it the most, kind of scares me. In this quote, it talks about how our experiences following an event are reflective in how we remember that event. But the question I have is not how our future influences the way we remember our past, but how does the way we remember our past- our reconstructed memories- influence our future?