I Forgot To Remember To Forget! How To Remember Stuff You Really Want To Remember

There are times within certain situations that come up throughout one’s lifetime, mine included that evoke certain memories, memories from long ago or several long years ago, so much so, that I thought perhaps they had left my mind forever. Osmosis doesn't always work, nor does banging your head on a keyboard work too well either!

Sometimes it will take just a name to pop one of those mind files back into an open space of my mind and make me think of the oddest stuff.

For example, when I came across the surname Wilson this morning looking something up in my journal, I thought of an old grade-school chum by the name of Pat Wilson, who used to mimic quite amazingly, a fifth grade-school teacher we had together, whose name escapes me at the moment, who used phrases like, “Hey! Too noisy (Go to the) end of (the) line” or the classic phrase, complete with hands-down motions, “Simmer…down,” in the quietest of quietest voices without sounding too intimidating.

Then while in conversation and hearing someone mention the name “Maggie,” I quickly burst out into song, singing “Maggie May,” not the Rod Stewart hit, but the little raunchy Beatles tune that comes directly after the song “Let It Be,” on side one of the album with the same name.

What can I say? It can happen just like that; in the wink of an eye and I start remembering something I hadn’t thought about in years, still I’ve always wondered about where it all comes from and where it all goes to. I seem to think that folks like me and others similarly tend to remember places and names more than they realize or more than they care to admit.

For all practical purposes, when someone puts you on the spot in order to make you sweat bullets or wants to make an example of you, which so many try to do to me, but never achieve their goal, it’s simply called blanking or blocking it out totally.

Under different circumstances, you will remember the awful experience as cute, adorable, funny embarrassing or what ever feelings or emotions you felt at that particular time.

And then of course, there are varying aids to help you remember, like books and pills and teas, but no matter how much ginkgo you guzzle, books you broach or pills you pop, if you take other things such as fake sugar such as aspartame, you are bound to forget!

One way to remember events is through photographs; John Lennon always used that method and it seemed to work for him; I wholeheartedly agree! It’s a great way to get your mind back in shape. I also remember things by attaching lyrics and sentences to certain situations or try to remember the weather on the day the event occurred.

I used to record a lot of my poetry, prose and performances back in the day and still do to a certain degree, and believe me when you listen to old interviews or old taped events, the memories are everlasting.

I also save from time-to-time, emails or instant message conversations with certain individuals for both character study usage and for remembrance sake.

Sometimes I get told that I try to hang onto the past when I should really be focusing on the future; oh but I am! The past, although in my life has been very wicked and cruel at times, has also been kind and tender and quite frankly, human.

No matter how hard we try at times to promise ourselves not to remember the past by dwelling on it all the time, it is extremely hard to make the same promise of not repeating it. Songs can be that way sometimes. So can people; memory is sure amazing, ain’t it?

While I was writing this essay earlier today, I came across six good tips that we can all use to freshen up our brains once in a while. They come from an article entitled “Smart Ways To Use Your Brain,” by Brian Thwaits, so enjoy! It's important to use your brain well. You will perform better on the job if you practice the following techniques 1>Intention-It's unlikely that we will do a good job of remembering unless we first prepare ourselves. In other words, get in the habit of planning to remember. 2>Repetition-This is probably the most popular way that we try to remember things. It works for small amounts of information, but is too dull and too slow on its own for larger chunks of data. 3>Association-Strange as it may seem, the mind has an easier time remembering two items linked together than separately. For instance, establishing some kind of link between a person's name (which is difficult to remember) and face (which is much easier) will improve your memory considerably the next time you meet that person. 4>Meaningfulness-It's very difficult to store information that doesn't make sense to us. (That's why it took us so long to memorize multiplication tables and passages from Shakespeare when we were in school!) More effort should be made understanding ideas before we attempt to actually store them in our memory systems. 5>Visualization-Our brains store pictures, shapes and colors much more easily than words and numbers. When we speak or write to others, then, we must do our best to present information in as visually stimulating a way as possible. Doing so will automatically increase memory power. 6>Chunking-Dividing large amounts of data into "chunks" or separate categories will also make remembering much easier. We too often overload our memory systems by trying to cram in far too much all at once. Our brains prefer bite-size pieces!