My legs were bound, I made a hop-ker-shuffle closer and closer to the edge. My toes were set over the side of one of the highest bridges in the world. I would fall for five seconds.
One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi, four Mississippi, five.

Wrapped around my shins were these big pads to make sure no cords dug in painfully. When they put these pads on they stuck down with velcro. I was sure there was nothing structurally integral to the jump depending on that. Regardless, as I took my place, ready for a majestic swan-dive off the Bloukrans bungy jump in South Africa, the soundtrack of my thoughts was a track I’d just made up called “something is velcro.” Those were the only lyrics.

I had begun regretting this decision about three days earlier, but somehow here we were. My Dutch friend, Frank, is a very persuasive character. I took my place, the guys running things told me they would count to three and then I’d go.
“Don’t look down, look straight ahead” they said.
I lifted my head, the view down the ravine and out to green expanse was glorious.
I quietly sang my chorus to myself again;
“Something is velcro.”
“threetwoonebungy.”
I hesitated.
They nudged me.
My majestic swan dive turned out to be me, slowly crumpling into a ball and flopping over the edge. The green expanse fell away as the ravine inverted. It now towered above me in my vision and the expanse ahead flipped to become the view stretching away to the mouth of the river and out to the Indian Ocean, sky and sea reversed as I plummetted for my five seconds.
One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi, four Mississippi, five.

Afterwards they showed us video footage of the jump and asked if we wanted it on a memory stick for 10 bucks. I was horrified by the crumpled ball of Joel rolling off the bridge and flailing nearly 700ft towards the earth.
“Err, I’m okay thanks, thanks for the experience!”

A hero of mine passed away recently, one of my favourite chapters in his brilliant book ‘Thinking, Fast and Slow’ is about understanding our attitudes to our experiencing or remembering selves. The chapter is titled ‘Life as a Story’. Here’s the thought experiment of an amnesic vacation to help set the scene:

“At the end of the vacation, all pictures and videos will be destroyed.
Furthermore, you will swallow a potion that will wipe out all your memories of the vacation.
How would this prospect affect your vacation plans? How much would you be willing to pay for it, relative to a normally memorable vacation?”

The underlying assumption here is that you make choices which require you to undertake activities that stand the greatest chance of receiving that most excellent classification - memorable.

The other question he asks is whether you would be willing to undergo a painful surgical procedure if afterwards you were able to take a pill that would remove all memory of the event. We typically massively overvalue the life of the remembering self over the experiencing self.

My Dutch friend may have completed the bungee jump for his experiencing self, I’m not sure, I haven’t asked. For me, it was for the remembering self. This whole blog is for my remembering self! What about you? What are you willing to put the experiencing self through for your remembering self?

Here’s Mr Kahneman again on the subject;
“My informal observation is that most people are remarkably indifferent to the pains of their experiencing self. Some say they don’t care at all… Odd as it may seem, I am my remembering self, and the experiencing self, who does my living, is like a stranger to me.”

The chapter of the book is not prescriptive, it is not noting that the experiencing or remembering self is better, just that they are different. The last line he makes here has always stayed with me. Once more - “Odd as it may seem, I am my remembering self, and the experiencing self, who does my living, is like a stranger to me.”

Equally important to me is the book ‘The Furious Longing of God’ by Brennan Manning, in another short chapter titled ‘union’, in which he outlines that the central theme of the Gospel of John is ‘restful abiding union’ - centrally important in a Christian life. For me it reads as having my experiencing and remembering self both perfectly present in the knowledge of who God is and who I truly am.

Manning writes “I’ve decided that if I had my life to live over again, I would not only climb more mountains, swim more rivers, and watch more sunsets; I wouldn’t only jettison my hot water bottle, raincoat, umbrella, parachute, and raft; I would not only go barefoot earlier in the spring and stay out later in the fall; but I would devote not one more minute to monitoring my spiritual growth. No, not one.”

My friends and I don’t often take photos of our times together. We don’t usually share on social media, we are not curating our lives for our remembering selves. I am not making a comment on that, only noting that for us I feel a keener connection to experiencing self memories and often more restful experiences whether we are running together, listening to music together, praying and reading the Bible together. I find that when I’m living in more ‘abiding, restful union’ with God that my experiencing self is less of a stranger to me and that I remain able to create a life and memories that will continue to be happily reserved for the remembering self who will revisit them years from now, even without huge photo reserves.

John 7:38 - “Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.”