I've Forgotten What I Am Writing About .....

Saw a quote this morning, and yes, it was on Facebook, but it resonated so well as it related to a conversation had a couple of days ago with a temporary house guest I currently have.

The conversation began with her expressing frustration that she considers she is “getting older” because of her ability to remember certain names and facts seems to be on the increase with the increase in her age.

I had had the same conversation with friend of mine earlier that very day, a friend who is a mere and sprightly young twenty-something-year-old whereas I am a wiser and not quite so sprightly thirty-something-year-old.

The twenty-something-year-old thought that despite not wanting to acknowledge it, she is reminded constantly of her natural annual aging by the fact she keeps forgetting things.  Short term things and long term things. 

Short term relating to the usual situation where one walks into a room to get or do something but by the time you are in there you have forgotten what it is that you have gone into there for.

                                 

And then there are the recollection things from some years ago.  The house guest was trying her best to remember the name of someone who was relevant to our conversation but no matter how hard she squinted her eyes and dug deep into the brain cells, she could not bring to the forefront of her brain the person’s name.  This was despite the fact she had been a close associate of the person for some period a few years ago.

On both occasions I chuckled at their frustration.  The house guest was a teenager by comparison to my other friend and I but was already putting her momentary amnesia down to age.  How little she knows what she is in for.  If she feels frustration now, imagine the great sense of intense and continual frustration she will feel when she hits my numeric age.

It happens to me constantly; getting up off this chair in front of the computer to go do something really important and before I am across the hallway the process and purpose of the important thing I was about to do has totally gone.  Nowadays, being very used to this happening, I pause momentarily, try to recall what the purpose of my standing and walking three steps was for, then laugh aloud, shake my head in bemusement, and then head straight for the pantry as that’s the next best place to be.  

That is particularly so at this period in time because some really kind friend recently presented me with one very large and very numtious fruit cake which, no matter what my resolve was about not touching it until a special occasion, the resolve has not withstood those forgetful pauses hence the fruitcake beckons.  The fruitcake beckoning is aided by the fact it had been well soaked in rum prior to the baking.  It literally brings warmness to my inner core and makes me very happy.

                          

  At the same time it is fulfilling a need of reward for the aging process of forgetfulness.  Its purpose is being well patronised.

It all has a circular purpose.  Because I am prone to head to the pantry at every forgetful moment it means my later conscience then tells me that I need to go out and exercise to balance out the negative and long lasting effects of the fruit cakes, slices, chocolates, caramel slices and whatever else is awaiting in the pantry.  Thus the sole purpose of why I jog, swim, heave weights in a gym or sit on a bicycle seat that is going nowhere is to burn of the calorific intake of forgetful moments.

And folk think I do all that because I am a strong minded, strong willed woman, whose goal setting it to be admired.  Ha! 

                               

As for long term memory loss on my part;  many decades ago I realised the Brain Gods had blessed me with loss of long term memories as a way of blocking out the negatives of the past and allow me to enjoy the now positives.  Therefore I have never worried about forgetting things from long ago.  Indeed, I find it an absolute positive aspect of memory loss.  I makes it so very rewarding whenever I am with old friends and they reminisce (as old friends tend to do more and more these days – the older they get the more they live in reminisces), and talk about an incident, a person, a happening from long ago and my brain lights up with an almost audible ting of a deep-in-the-brain-mass-wave-length with teeny snippets of that memory long since buried illuminating and sparking yet more brain waves of the memory.  The more it sparks the more detail of it comes back.

It turns into a thrill and delight to relive and enjoy the memory (or not, dependent on the memory) all afresh, all anew.

So it was years ago I stopped fretting and worrying I had forgotten things in the past as one day I came to the realisation that my brain was merely a personal floppy disc.  Yes, floppy discs have long since become redundant in this modern world, but for us less modern ones they are still quite useful and reliably functioning human tools. 

I worked out that my particular brain works in the manner of a floppy disc as opposed to the more modern hard drives.  

                           

That is, there is only so much storage space floppy discs can hold and once that storage space is filled excess and less used memory cells are then dropped off the end of it and miraculously transferred to my personal Cloud. 

The Cloud being somewhere up in the ether, floating and following behind me at all times, which has a lifetime guarantee to be able to access the stored memories for recollection whenever required.   It’s magic.  

Mind you, recollection is not instant for there has to be a few moments of whirring and whizzing while its engines start up before beginning to download;  but overall it works reliably well once it begins whizzing after one encounters or meets with an old friend or associate.

Having a floppy disc is a wonderful thing.  It means most of the bad memories drop off and go into The Cloud, which means one cannot dwell long on them; but when the good bits come out of storage by yet another coincidental meeting with someone, the joy of the reliving is almost as good, if not better, than when it was lived all that time ago.

                                          

Whether twenty-something, thirty-something (as I will remind you that I am), forty-something, or one foot in the grave  …  do not worry about apparent memory loss you may find you are experiencing because the memories are in fact not lost but stored, with ready access to be resurrected as and when required and with fulfilling enjoyment. 

And remember (a most relevant word) they have merely been handily transferred to The Cloud storage because of the fact you have lived so much more than those who are younger; thereby you are the one who is wiser, more interesting, more astute, more knowledgeable, more resourceful, more skilled, more cunning, more enchanting, more interesting and more mentally adroit than your younger associates. 

So, fret not as you turn another birthday.  Yearn not for your youthfulness; the floppy discs of the younger are more empty than filled.  That makes us seemingly memory-loss ones far, far more consummate individuals than those younger smart-ass, smart alecs.

    

Now, I came in here to do something ... what the heck was it?........