God has perfect timing; never early, never late. It takes a little patience and faith, but it’s worth the wait.
—Unknown
✏️ The Unreliability of Memory
Since we are very young, we begin to remember. Many things we do not know how we came to know them — like numbers and language — & others, such as in formal education, can be traced back to a deliberate act. Yet memory has a subjective element: it is muddled by emotion, blurred by the passing of time, and distorted by desire. Over reliance on one’s memory is a suboptimal method of remembering things, particularly things of importance.
Professions that rely heavily on repetitive knowledge and practice know not to rely on memory. Pilots, for example, utilize checklists, flow practices, and even other humans as a buttress to the mind. When the stakes are high, one slipped thought from a tired first officer can have dire consequences. Even in the operation of the home, the use of lists is commonplace if one wishes to not forget the garlic at the market.
More complex is the relation between the memory and emotion & self-perception. A common proverb states that man is typically a judge for the crimes of others and a lawyer for his own. Many who commit wrongs — liars, adulterers, murders — I reckon have a different recollection of the motives and events of their wrong doings. To live with one’s self in peace, one must forgive himself of wrongs: often, this requires telling oneself a story to rationalize the bad behaviour, or even forgetting key aspects of it altogether. I am sure there are many of us who have chalked up the transgressions of our past to youthful folly or ignorance to relinquish ourselves of the burden of responsibility. The memory of these moments are forever altered when we do such things, because we no longer see them as they happened, but as we wished them to happen.
The memory is a sanctuary that must be respected and kept clean if it is to be of any use to the individual. Any conscious act of deception twists our view, and we must do everything we can to keep the lens clear. For the memory is not only the sanctuary of the past, but the theatre in which we perceive the present.
Integrity and virtue protect the memory from subjectiveness and human error.
Dominus pastor.
💡 Food for Thought
None of you will enter paradise by your actions, but by the grace of God alone.
🧬 Paper of the Week — Development of a Complex Intervention for the Maintenance of Postpartum Smoking Abstinence: Process for Defining Evidence-Based Intervention
Citation: Notley, Caitlin, et al. "Development of a complex intervention for the maintenance of postpartum smoking abstinence: Process for defining evidence-based intervention." International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 16.11 (2019): 1968.
Relapse to tobacco smoking for pregnant women who quit is a major public health problem. Evidence-based approaches to intervention are urgently required. This study aimed to develop an intervention to be integrated into existing healthcare. A mixed methods approach included a theory-driven systematic review identifying promising behaviour change techniques for targeting smoking relapse prevention, and qualitative focus groups and interviews with women (ex-smokers who had remained quit and those who had relapsed), their partners and healthcare professionals (N = 74). A final stage recruited ten women to refine and initially test a prototype intervention. Our qualitative analysis suggests a lack, but need for, relapse prevention support. This should be initiated by a trusted ‘credible source’. For many women this would be a midwife or a health visitor. Support needs to be tailored to individual needs, including positive praise/reward, novel digital and electronic support and partner or social support. Advice and support to use e cigarettes or nicotine replacement therapy for relapse prevention was important for some women, but others remained cautious. The resulting prototype complex intervention includes face-to-face support reiterated throughout the postpartum period, tailored digital and self-help support and novel elements such as gifts and nicotine replacement therapy (NRT).
Bonne fetes!
AT