I had a strange thing happen to me just a few moments ago. I had a thought. It occured to me why some of us that hit that *just past the middle age* milestone can no long think or remember basic things. Or when we are talking or doing something, we suddenly forget what we are talking about or what we are doing.
We’ve gone our entire lives putting memories and thoughts into our brains. That’s always worked so well. We think it. Our brains usually remember it. We stuff hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of thoughts and memories into our brains. But what happens when our brains run out of space? It’s not like our brains will grow or expand. Once those babies are full, they are full. If we want to keep adding thoughts or memories, something has to go.
And go they do!
Take the instance when John was looking for the battery charger. I told him it’s right there. He was sitting at his desk, in his chair, and looked all over the desk for that charger. He looked in drawers. He looked under the desk, beside the desk. I kept telling him, it’s right there. He couldn’t see it. He must have looked for ten minutes, trying to find it. Finally, he saw it. It was maybe six inches away from him the entire time, in plain site. (men)
That’s my point! After so many years of his brain remembering this and that, it simply ran out of room to be able to remember what a battery charger looked like. So even though it was only six inches away from him and in plain site, he couldn’t see it because his brain forgot what it looked like.
The other morning I woke up and for whatever reason the first thing that came to my mind was one if by land, two if by sea. And my brain immediately went to thinking of … of… I could not for the life of me remember his name, the traitor. I was beside myself, telling myself I have known this my entire life, how could I forget the name of the traitor? So I tried thinking of his initials, what did his name start with? I couldn’t even remember that! It was about two hours later when I finally remembered, Benedict Arnold.
My poor brain knew it was about to turn 46, and it had so many thoughts stuffed into it over the years, that it simply had to squeeze some of them out in order to make room for new thoughts. That’s why we can’t remember basic things. We simply run out of room in our brains. That’s my excuse anyway.
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