Preface To Forgetting: My Stupid Brain Theory

This is a theory of the brain I have, which I am certain is stupid, & which may apply only to me, & which I don't have any evidence to back it up with except my own personal experience, & which I haven't actually gone out & read anything to try to support it, possibly because I am afraid I am wrong.  So it's probably best called the Narcissistic Gary Brain Thought-Thing.  Here it is:

My brain believes that when certain memories I have are put somewhere else - saved in a journal, or a letter, or an email, or anywhere other than my brain - it (the brain) can safely forget them, or store them someplace obscure in the dusty vaults of the mind.

The most recent example of this happened when I was re-reading this short story I wrote over twenty-five years ago.  It's a sad truth that I one time wanted to be a writer - but, as this blog demonstrates, it's obviously not something I was ever good at.  But in the story, I described something that had really happened to me, involving my mother & a relative.  It was a somewhat traumatic experience, & it shook me - I was accused of something I hadn't done, & luckily my protestations of innocence were accepted.  But I hadn't thought about it for years - probably not since I wrote the story.  How could that be?

Because my brain said, Oh, he wrote this down. Put that somewhere way down. Let's make more space for Bob Dylan lyrics!

It gets worse: now that my brain knows that I can access almost any information on the little computer I keep in my back pocket, it stores in difficult-to-access parts of itself things that I really should know.  I couldn't bring immediately to mind the director of It's A Wonderful Life the other day!  Frank Capra!  How hard is that to remember?  Not hard at all!

Honestly, it'll only get worse.  & it could just be old age, or alcohol use, but I suspect we're all experiencing some aspect of this in our lives.  We know we have access to so much information that we used to either have to keep in books or in our brains.  No more.  If I can't remember that guy that was in that film, I can describe the film in a search engine & it's better than any recall I've ever had.

Forgetting, alas, is the future.  Let's just hope we don't forget how to work the external brains that will have more information than we would ever need or want.