Twinn Swan

Memory, as a crude definition, is the sum of what we remember and what we have forgotten. By creating new memories, we can completely change and transform our brain and our mind.

Your brain can learn to do absolutely anything… with enough training, practise and repetition. Through reiteration and refinement, these memory patterns become ingrained and automatic. To consolidate these memories, however, we need lots of focused practise.

Why do we need to remember and not forget? The reason is simple. Memory allows you to have a sense of who you were and who you’ve been. Memory, regardless of whether it is shared or individual, is essential to the experience of being a conscious being. On that same note, it’s strange that we actually don’t remember most of our lives.

Much of what we do remember is incomplete and inaccurate. Our brains have only evolved to remember what is meaningful to us. Since so much of our lives are habitual, routine and inconsequential–our brain forgets plenty of things that we are supposed to take notice of and care sufficiently about.

The reason why we forget is not because that knowledge is unimportant, but because our brain has not been provided with the kind of input necessary to support memory creation and retrieval.

Heartache and confusion can be caused by memory loss; even though remembering–just like forgetting–is a natural and normal part of the human condition. Memory is profoundly impacted by meaning, emotion, sleep, stress and context.

It seems, then, that it can be difficult to forget, but equally difficult to remember.