Forgetting is completely natural. It helps us to move on from traumas, bad events, pain and not least it helps us to forget irrelevant informations. We even have a saying for this: “Time heals all wounds.” It’s all about forgetting, yet, we still view it as a nasty effect of the brain.

I once heard somewhere, that the only difference between a 6 and a 60 year old is, that the 6 years old won’t say repeatedly “I forgot it again.”. Apart from aging, I consider this true. Unlike a youngling, we are able to flush ourselves down into the cold depths of oblivion, which has a negative impact to our brain functions. This is something we should forget forever. Thus, we can see from a very long distance, that the very first problem is ourselves. We lift borders/walls in front of us. We listen to our very own inner doubts, but catch this: we don’t forget everything. We forget the informations we don’t need or at least the information that seems like we don’t need.

Where are my seeds?!

When we put down our keys somewhere, most of the time, we do this without noting. It has became an automatic, careless, meaningless process. Just like when we throw around seeds randomly in a garden, we can’t tell what will happen with them. It’s not even certain that they will reach the soil where they need to be, they could be fully lost. Of course, we can take a walk in the garden and try to find them, but it’s going to be like looking for a needle in a haystack.

Like the information of the keys’ new position, the future of the seeds is also unpredictable. If the seeds were carefully placed, planted and tended, they could grow healthily. Similarly, if we carefully noted the keys’ place when we put them down, we could easily find them next time when we need them. In this case our memory is not faulty, we didn’t forget the keys’ location. Instead, our seeds were never planted to be remembered, so the keys location were never planted to be remembered.

The sowing we need to take care of

Just like the gardens, if we want our mind to thrive, we need to take care of it. If we neglect it, sooner or later the memories may perish, depending on their resilience and strength. Some memories are completely undemanding and can live longer without care, while others may require constant attention and won’t live a day without it. Sometimes just like perished plants, perished memories could have some residues too, which, if we restore skillfully, they can be completely healthy again. It’s like the moment when we smell, taste, touch, hear, see or feel something and a memory just comes to our mind on a snap. It’s up to us to strengthen these residues.

The weed we want to get rid of

Almost inevitable, at some point, we will have some weeds in the garden that we want to get rid of. So we grab the tools and remove them from the other plants. It can be hard if the root goes deep, but it can be fairly easy too. These weeds are not just ugly, if they get too strong and if we ignore them, they can kill the other wonderful plants. These situations can happen with memories too. We collect some that we would prefer to forget and we will do everything to make them disappear. Some of them could go easily, some of them could stay for a while. Some are so strong that can weaken others. That’s why we need to garden our mind. We don’t need those weeds, but we want to be amazed at what the others look like.

The Watering Schedule

You can’t understand this, right? Don’t worry, neither am I.

Just as the different plants have different watering schedules, our memories also require regular maintenance to thrive. This schedule determines how often we have to repeat information to make it long lasting. For example, without repetition we tend to forget 50% of the information within the first hour, 70% by the first day and 90% by the end of the first month. So let’s get to take care of our memories to make these numbers become better and last longer.