Memory, Technology, My Dad and Me
My father has had Multiple Sclerosis since before I was born. One of the primary symptoms of my dad’s MS is Short Term Memory Loss.
In a Quixotic, innately doomed attempt to retain information, throughout my life he has asked me to write down things he considered important.
I understood on some level why my father wanted me to jot down matters of interest but I was frustrated by these requests all the same for two reasons.
First and foremost, the things my dad had me write down seemed extraordinarily unimportant. They were things like movies I’d seen or classes I’d taken or a book I’d read. They seemed pointless and random to me, and they involved my life, so I couldn’t imagine why they would be of use to him.
The second reason I was flummoxed by my dad’s preferred method of trying to retain information was because it was extraordinarily ineffective. My father would have me write something down on a loose leaf piece of paper or newspaper and then that loose leaf piece of paper or newspaper with some random bit of info would be crumpled up and put in his pants pocket, only to end up in the trash at the end of the night.
My father was like the main character in Memento except that his system never worked. Instead of helping my dad remember, this method ensured that my father would forget a pointless bit of business not once but twice; first when I told him it and secondly when he haphazardly threw it where it belonged: in the trash.
My stupid brain was annoyed by my dad’s constant requests to write pointless trivia down for posterity because his strategy didn’t make sense to me. I did not realize that human behavior isn’t inherently logical. People don’t make sense. I don’t make sense. My dad doesn’t make sense. Humanity doesn’t make sense. Life doesn’t make sense. Expecting the world to make sense is a surefire recipe for misery.
Accepting that the world does not make sense is the only way to make life bearable. Besides, there was a certain logic to my dad having me write everything down. It was just spectacularly unsuccessful.
My dad was, and remains, old school, analog.
I am, however, extremely, excessively online. I’ve been thinking a lot about my dad and his requests that I write things down for him to remember these days because even though I do not have Multiple Sclerosis, it is very hard for me to remember things.
So if something is important I ask my wife to text me it or email me relevant information. For example she’s about to head out of town for work for a few days so I had her email me everything I need to know.
It’s a more effective way of retaining information than my dad’s. Technology aside, however, I’m very much following in my father’s footsteps.
Sometimes you don’t understand something until you experience it for yourself. Getting older and more forgetful has allowed me to have more empathy and compassion for my father both today and in the past.
I understand why he struggled to remember because I perpetually struggle to remember. I’m just fortunate in that my tools for remembering are more effective than my father’s thanks to email and the Notes app on my phone. Otherwise it is entirely possible that I would still be scribbling notes on paper to be shoved into my pockets and then lost forever.
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