Worried About Your Memory? Give Yourself a Break

Have you been thinking about how much trouble you have remembering certain things, and more so as you age? I have, and more and more, especially with names. I feel like I must have been better at remembering names when I was teaching decades ago or I could not have taught classes full of kids, or college students. But today, I see a group of kids, and don't see them for very long at a time and they pass through the grades so fast that I don’t remember as many as I wish I did. I really have to rack my brain anymore with kids' names, but today I am not beating myself up about it anymore. I have found something about the science of memory and I am no longer going to give it that much power to disturb my peace, rock my boat, or cause me to worry myself into a state of grief. I just started reading a book called "Remember: The Science of Memory and the Art of Forgetting" by Lisa Genova, the author of "Still Alice." I read the book. I don't know if I saw the film or not. I don't think I did. I'm sure it's good, but I don't watch many films anymore. Lisa Genova is a neuroscientist, and she loves to tell you about how the brain works. So far, I am worrying less about my forgetting. The main points I have gotten from reading two chapters is that there is no such thing as a "memory bank," and that the reason we forget the things we forget is because we didn't make a memory of them in the first place. This explains most of our forgetting, such as where you parked your car, where you left your keys, what you went into the kitchen for and left the cabinet door open while you go try to remember. I have had that problem all my life and it almost always works to just go back to the room I started out from and I'll remember what I was going to do or look for. My mother's mother and my father had Alzheimer’s, so I do think about that sometimes, but Lisa Genova, the neuroscientist, has almost convinced me that I am not on the path to that disease just because I have trouble remembering names and a lot of other things, actually. Yesterday, I forgot to bring my water bottle to school, the day before yesterday, I forgot to bring my lunch, and today, I forgot to bring my coffee and my cup holder. However, I will not worry about it because I have learned from the neuroscientist that it is all a matter of attending, what some call living in the moment, being self-aware, thinking about what you're doing and staying focused, bottom line. "So, if we want to remember something," Genova writes, "we have to first pay attention to it." The other day I remembered the kind of car my maternal grandmother used to drive: It was a Hillman Minx. How I remembered the "Minx" part, I do not know, but when I looked it up, sure enough, there it was, my nana's cute little Hillman. It is a little English car they stopped making in 1970. Think about how many things you forget and how many things you remember. I don't know if there's a pattern. I expect to learn more about it as I keep reading that book. I will keep you posted. Meanwhile, one more thing I want to share with you about all this. I think I heard God say to me this morning, "Give yourself a break," and I think I have just been worrying too much about everything, things I can't control, things that are not life-threatening at all, and one of those things is what I am "supposed" to write. I can write about whatever I want to write about. That's what I've always done, isn't it? And, secondly, I should stop beating myself up about what I can or cannot do as well or as efficiently as anyone else. That doesn't mean quit, that means keep doing it. There's another great book by Christian psychologist Larry Crabb called "The Pressure's Off," and I think it may be time to read it again. I hope some of this might have helped somebody.