By GREG GAST
What is memory?
Memory is the faculty by which the brain encodes, stores, and retrieves information. It is a record of experience that guides future action.
Memory encompasses the facts and experiential details that people consciously call to mind as well as the ingrained knowledge that surfaces without effort or even awareness.
Memory’s role is allowing people to understand, navigate, and make predictions about the world, personal memories provide the foundation for a rich sense of oneself and one’s life. And give rise to experiences such as nostalgia.
In ancient times the ability to memorize was a prized skill. Whole cultures were passed down though the centuries by those who remembered stories, legends, history and laws.
Today the internet has made memorization irrelevant.
What we don’t remember, we think we can always look up.
We have abandoned requiring students to memorize poems, famous speeches, multiplication table and all sort of academic materials.
Here are some reasons that we should strive to improve our ability to remember.
- Memorization is a discipline of the mind much needed in an age when so many minds are lazy, distracted, have little to think about or think sloppily.
- You can’t always “Google it.” Not everything of importance is on the web.
- Memorization creates the repertoire of what we think about. To be an expert in any field requires knowledge that you already have. Nobody can think in a vacuum of information.
- Understanding is nourished by the information we hold in our working memory as you think. Without knowledge, we have a mind of mush. We think with the ideas held in working memory which is stored in our brains.
- Memory develops learning and memory schema that promote improved ability to learn. The more you remember the more you learn.
Let know what you think.
Greg Gast is Real Life Counseling, 3295 Crawfordville Hwy., suite #4, Crawfordville FL 32327.
