Memory and the Human Mind

It's funny how the slightest of things may slip your mind sometimes. For instance, we all know there are four seasons in the year, but when do they start exactly? Well if you asked me that a few days ago I would have said "it starts with Spring in January!" I honestly didn't know, it was one of those things that I had taken for granted most of my life, just assuming the seasons of the year by their weather patterns, and if you were to ask me how many days are there in this month, I would have to check the calendar.

Memory and the human mind:. simple things that escape us,

These simple things escape me, nearly entirely taken for granted in my daily life, but there are other things which I can recite as if I myself where a computer. "jtmj2-krbdv-yp2qp-3gc8p-qrm7v" That is a windows 98 product key, and I just popped it right off the top of my head.

Memory and the human mind:. practical memory,

Practical application begets memory, and thus the things which we cast aside as simple, mundane, or trivial, often escape us. If the memory serves as a hard drive for the brain, then it could be said that there is only so much space available, and with this in mind. You could say things that we practice are hard-coded, and things we don't simply get deleted.

Memory and the human mind: trivial things,

The trivial things in life we have no need to memorize but what I would call trivial you may call important. Einstein once said . "Never memorize what you can look up in books," I think he said it best, the daily things that we trivialize are just that, trivial things, which can easily be found upon a wall. The things that leave a lasting impression on us, are the not so trivial things that we actually apply to our daily lives.

If you were to introduce me to someone, I would almost surely instantly have forgotten there name by the time you finished saying it, yet I could recite off the top of my head years later, what color his/her eyes, or hair where, and given the face I would know it. Not to a name, but to an image memorized, an impression made on my subconscious.

While some things need to be memorized, others most certainly do not, and to force memory of those would be little more than a waste of space in the attic of your brain. What Einstein said holds even more meaning today, as with the invention of the Internet, it takes even less time than ever before to simply look something up. The real question is, are you willing to take the time to look for the answers?