They say you should live in the moment, but do you know what that exactly means? Let me tell you something! Our brains tend to erase all the mundane events from our memory. Now, take it with a grain of salt because I’m neither a doctor nor a scientist. I’m just an enthusiastic observer. That’s it!
I recently stumbled upon a video where a guy brilliantly explained how we tend to forget ordinary days: the ones filled with mundane tasks like commuting, sipping tea, or doing household chores. Our brain erases those everyday moments unless we capture them on camera or journal about them. Isn’t it mind-blowing? It’s entirely possible that you might not remember a single thing about a day unless it’s filled with something amazing or traumatic.
Sometimes, I indulge in this exciting game where I challenge myself to memorize a phase of my life simply to check how much I remember from that specific period. Just recently, I was trying to memorize a phase which occurred 16 years ago. It was a time when I stayed in a hostel for a year, intensely studying for some entrance exams. Don’t get me wrong, I was able to memorize every minute detail of that period, both the good and the bad. The real challenge, though, was that I couldn’t recall what I did nearly every day at the hostel. Can you believe it? I couldn’t even remember how I managed to iron my clothes there! It’s a silly thing however, it happened almost every day and I absolutely didn’t have any memory of it.
I vaguely remembered washing the clothes and putting them out to dry on the terrace of the building. I decided to check with a friend who was my roommate back then at the hostel. I was flabbergasted by the way she told me that we didn’t actually wash her own clothes; there was someone there to do it for us, even iron them! All we did was toss our worn clothes into a basket near the bathroom. Honestly, I have no recollection of the basket or anyone else washing our clothes, despite doing it almost every day from there. How is that even possible?
I now realize that unless you live in the moment and observe all the details of a particular event, you won’t have any memories of it. It’s obvious that the brain cannot store all the memories; it is not a supercomputer. However, if we intentionally observe the events happening around us in the present by pinpointing something special about them, the brain can store the related details. Further explanation, if we observe a person doing something and notice something special about them, like their outfit, the memory of the person doing the thing gets registered in the brain. For instance, I vividly remember someone oiling her hair just because I remembered the outfit that she wore at that particular moment. And again, you can easily memorize things if we deliberately create a story around them. For example, you tell yourself in your mind that you’re going to this event because of this particular thing. Or else, you simply take a photo of the event or journal about it—easy as pie!
So let me explain the moral of this blog: Unless you live your life intentionally or romanticize your life, especially the ordinary moments, the memory of that particular day will be completely wiped out of your brain. And when you get old and you want to remember things, even though the day had occurred in your life, it becomes irrelevant. Also, don’t get me started on the distractions from our mobile phones! When an event happens, instead of enjoying the moment, we tend to scroll through it, which makes the moment much more irrelevant. Or perhaps, every event in your life occurs simultaneously, and the brain simply can’t grasp every single moment unless you make it special? You never know!
