A friend and I were chatting on whatsapp recently when this little bit was part of the exchange. The context was about transformation of personalities, which however is irrelevant for this post.
Young Friend: Sir, do you find good memory a blessing or a curse?
Yours Truly: A blessing for me. I don’t have many bad ones in my life to handle. I know some good friends who had many unpleasantnesses in their growing up who wish they had poorer memories.
I often wish that I had a poorer memory when some thoughts of the past, not necessarily negative, but of pain like the death of a loved one, or a couple of lost opportunities due to prior commitments come up. Overwhelmingly however, I have pleasant memories to cheer me up like the many good things that have happened in my life, and continue to happen.
Memory however is now not necessarily a great asset as just about everything can be stored away somewhere called the cloud and recalled at need. I wonder if people will therefore stop using their memories in the future like my generation did and do now. I see some examples like when I go shopping, when I do not need a calculator to total up a list of figures, whereas much younger assistants do.
