Full Brain

Do you know that feeling when you have the name or information on the tip of your tongue but you just cannot remember it?  What about when you walk into a room and forget why you entered it?  Some might call it aging and some might worry about dementia or Alzheimer's, but I think of it as a filing problem.  We are inundated every day with literally gigabytes of new information which is being added to the years of accumulated information. 

I believe the subconscious mind is constantly filtering and processing information in order to file it away for future reference.  I like to think of the brain as a huge file room with endless cabinets stretching into infinity.   There is no index or directory and there are no labels on any of the file cabinets.  Some have papers sticking out of the drawers.  Some have piles of papers and file folders sitting on top waiting to be filed because I know when I get in a hurry I leave things to file later. 

And I believe it is all there in our highly underused brains, forever.  It's just that so much information is coming in at any given time that I cannot keep up with the filing.  So it isn't that I don't know something or remember it, it is that I cannot find where it is filed.  

Everything I ever learned or saw or experienced is somewhere in that room. The fragments of songs I knew when I was 11, the directions to a friend's house when I was 16, old addresses and phone numbers, names of people I knew years ago, how to prepare a bank deposit for the job I had at 25 and so on.  Much of it is only relevant in memory, but some of it is useful like knowing how to drive or prepare dinner or do my job now.  

Now, this may seem like a silly distinction.  If I cannot remember something, does it matter why?  It does to me.  I believe that there is value in all those full file cabinets.  And in my dreamy hours I can look through and find things I can use.  Sometimes I am really surprised by what I find like a delightful memory that makes me smile.  Sometimes it is a truism or 'how to' that applies to my life today.  I find the thought of my full file room beautiful.  A treasure of the useful, the absurd, the wonderful, the sentimental, and the funny.