You Forget Things But Your Memory is Sharp. Sound Familiar?

You forget things but your memory is actually sharp. It's crazy but it's true, at least of me. Sometimes I tend to forget about certain things but I often have a photographic memory of events, to the detail. I amaze my pre-school classmates when I tell them events in our school days so vividly and accurately which they have forgotten and slowly remember only with the help of my stories. [Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash].

"You remember all that?" they ask me astonished. 

Because I tell them what they wore, what exactly they said, their facial expressions, who were present, what the occasion was and what they we holding in their hand at the time. Things like that. Then slowly the pieces come together in their minds and they get a picture of it, though still a bit hazy. "Yeah, I think I remember that!" they exclaim. 

Secrets to being more productive as you become less busy.

CLICK HERE!

But I sometimes easily forget what I'm told. And I smile and shake my head in wonder. 

Finally, one day I figured it out. I tend to forget what's not important to me and remember in detail what my mind considers as dear and vital. Like how my girlfriend (now my wife) smiled at me when I invited her for pizza after her lab duty then. Or how my dad drank coffee on his rocking chair by the window when I was 6. Or how my childhood buddies on the street where we lived in La Loma looked like. 

Once, I met on FB a childhood neighbor I played with some 50 plus years ago. I asked her if she remembered me and how her siblings were doing. She was fascinated that I still remembered their names and faces. "How could you remember us all?" she asked.

And I remember the stories my dad told me in detail, especially stories of his childhood and career as a young professional. I remember how he worded them, his face as he said them, his excitement and how his eyes moved while he searched his data bank in his head for details. I'm so good at noting such details. But I often easily forget where I placed my pen I was using just a second ago.

And finally, Holy Scriptures. When I read the bible, I feel I'm taken away back to the time the story in the bible had happened and I see every detail--like I'm watching a movie, or I'm right there in the midst of it all. Sometimes, I even become part of it. I remember the details. But often, I'm poor at memorizing verses, though at times I can manage fairly well. Sometimes.

I remember seeing somewhere (see?) that the mind chooses what it remembers. What it thinks is important it stores in an apt, easily accessible compartment in your brain, but what it sees as unimportant it stashes away in some remote corner of the brain, making them hard to retrieve. 

God is wonderful, making the brain work like that. It helps you arrange data in the brain from most relevant to just relevant, from mildly relevant to mildly irrelevant, from simply irrelevant to very irrelevant. It relaxes your mind this way. You conveniently forget what causes stress and suitably remember what causes happiness--if you let it do its job.

But once you interfere with the brain so that you reverse its operation--you insist on remembering the unimportant--the things that cause you pain or unhappiness--then you reverse the process. Then you get overstressed.

Not many people really respect your opinion or life principle. They want you to agree with their say or join them. You have to like their posts but they never like yours. Well, long ago I decided to be a NonJoiner. I don't care what they think.