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MEMORIES MAKE YOU WHO YOU ARE
Without memories you fall out of time. Your old memories last just long enough for you to think about them, then your brain moves onto another topic and that memory never comes back.
When you forget something, you think of it as a senior or junior moment, and nothing more. Can you remember what you had for breakfast this morning, or what you did when you just woke up? After you read a newspaper headline, did you forget how it began?
Everything we know about memory comes from studying damaged brains. There are basically two kinds of memory, those you know you remember, like the color of your car and taking a shower. These are unconscious memories stored in your cerebellum. Your brain can be damaged in one area, but the rest of the brain still keeps on working.
We used to think the brain was a video recorder, with all your lifetime memories stored in the brain file cabinet. If you can't find these memories, it's not that they disappeared, but you just lost access to them. If you start a Google search, you will certainly find them.
We find tragedies and wounds persist in our immediate memory. However the memories we really need, as the names of your dear friend or soul mate, where you left your key, what day is your doctor's appointment, all have a habit of disappearing. We waste over a month’s time every year, looking for things we somehow forgot.
Every day you are bombarded with new information, yet little of it is cataloged (like a new password or user ID) so it could be retrieved later. What if you had all this lost knowledge at your fingertips? You would certainly know more about yourself and the world. Many of your great ideas never get connected, because your memory has failed you.
Would you buy a new palm pilot or Blackberry if you couldn't always depend on easy access to everything? In the past, you were taught how to remember as well as what to remember. Those days are gone.
Today, we have an external memory supercomputer that allows us not to store information in our brains. Rather than remembering everything, we need to remember very little.
You'd like to preserve your past and keep it all in your memory. All your videotapes, iPod songs, digital camera photos, diaries, and calendars, all keep track of your activities and schedules. By outsourcing this memory, we have lost a great deal.
Your memory tries to protect you. You remember the nice, comfortable, and good things, but also all your wounds and bad choices in your past, are still beating inside you.
Information is fed to a mass of neurons in your brain that interprets it, and gives it a sense of what's happening and what will happen in the future. This allows you to respond in the best way.
Your brain tries to make order out of the chaos in your life. You don't have to remember most things that come into your brain. You often remember every detail is of your life, but you can't tell what's important and what's trivial. You have no way to prioritize, nor generalized. It may be better to forget and not remember. That might make you more human.
As we age, many of us suffer from mild cognitive impairment. Some of us will get Alzheimer's disease. You can't recall everything that happened today. You have lost the art of memory, and look for drugs to give you artificial memory. It is easier to take a ginko biloba or a smart soft drink that will improve your memory.
Drug companies are always looking for new drugs that will help us amplify our brains natural capacity to remember. It is sold to our college kids before exams so they can be sharper. Study buddies are bought like Ritalin and Red Bull, and use by over 25% of our college students.
What if you did have a better memory? You could remember things exactly as they happened without exaggerating and revising your memories. Would you still have memories that forget your promises? Or would you remember things that you want to remember?
Dear reader, the Internet is slowly stealing your memory!
Source: www.ngm.com, Nat Geographic Nov. 2007
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