A memory’s emotional intensity is not a timestamp for its accuracy.

Vividness feels like proof and is not. A memory can be brilliantly clear, complete with detail and certainty, and be wrong about the year, the person, or the sequence. Strong emotion at encoding makes a memory durable and does not make it accurate, and the resulting confidence is one of the more misleading feelings there is.

Where something important rests on a vivid memory, look for a document or a second person. Where nothing rests on it, let it be. The point is not to distrust yourself generally, only to stop treating clarity as evidence.