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Exploring the power of the mind

A few years ago I wrote an article on memories. It is an idea I have had. I offer it here as only an opinion. I know it sounds crazy, but to me it has some merit.

I was working on a Quote Anacrostic puzzle the other day. The clue for an entry was “Portuguese explorer.” Without thinking a bit, the name “Vasco da Gama” popped into my head. I wondered, where did that come from? Who is that guy? I took a peek at the answers and sure enough, he was the answer; and I even had the spelling correct. I must have learned about him back somewhere in about eighth grade.

When you store information on your computer’s hard drive, it is stored as an electrical charge. Nothing can be stored without making a change of some sort in the physical properties of the instrument which is holding the information. That applies to your brain also. For your brain to store any type of information, it must form either a chemical or electrical change in your brain. We don’t like to admit it, but brains, like everything else in this world, have limits in how many physical changes they have room for, but to be stored, a memory must affect a change in some physical way.

It seems obvious that the brain stores memories of everything we experience, even if we don’t consciously remember them, like Vasco Da Gama. It even stores many of our dreams when we are asleep. There are many things you may have consciously forgotten, but with a reminder you realize, “OH! yes, I remember now!” It was there but not easily recalled. Perhaps it was being kept in the seldom used file.

Presently, I am 88 years old, actually experiencing my 89th summer. I’m sure that in time we forget some things that never really interested us, but a lifetime of memories make a lot of wrinkles in an old noggin. I have memories that go back to when I was four years old, as I’m sure you do also. My point is that everything in this world is subject to limitations, even your brain.

As you advance in years your brain begins to reach its capacity for keeping memories. There is no place left to make a mark, or change, without disturbing something that is already there. When this begins to happen, one’s mind begins to lose agility. It begins to flounder in its ability to function as it did when it was freer, and operating with ample resources. Consequently, with little storage space left, you start having a problem with memories of recent events. In fact, your whole body begins to have trouble in operating its many functions that are controlled by your unconscious, now overloaded, struggling brain. Consequently, some activities controlling bodily functions are compromised. We might accurately call it “confusions of an overloaded brain.” We usually just simply call it the “effect of aging.”

All creatures have a general life expectancy, which must have some bearing on the capacity of their brains. Your computer would be less efficient, and operate sluggishly, like an old man’s brain, if it didn’t have a defragmenter, or a recycle bin that it could dump every once in a while to rid itself of useless memory (Like who was Vasco da Gama?).

It could be tempting to be able to rid the brain of useless memory and thereby infuse one’s life with a true possibility of the fountain of youth. It might however be accompanied with the presentation of a different personality, having abolished memories they thought were unimportant, but which had a strong effect of their view of life and their place in it.

I suppose the people who study these kinds of things would dust me off as a nitwit who doesn’t have a clue about the reality of things. They’d say my problem is caused by faulty circulation. I’d say faulty circulation was caused by an overloaded, struggling brain. Which came first, the chicken or the egg? May God bless America.

Richard Westlund is a Collins resident. Send comments to editorial@observertoday.com

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