We Forget that We Forget

People forget. Important things get forgotten. It happens all the time.

Our tendency seems to be deeply pressed into us. This has been recognized for centuries. This is itself nothing new.

Fear of being forgotten is a great driving force in history. Just look at what has been done to make “great” names.

Great buildings have been constructed to “insure” that the people whose moniker they carried would not slip into the abyss of lost memory. Washington has a monument, Eiffel has a tower. Trump has a tower and he’s not even dead yet.

Place names try to preserve the memory of those who founded them or are merely named after someone thought to be of importance.

St. Petersburg is named for a Tsar, Sao Paul for an apostle and Columbus for a discoverer. Pennsylvania and Maryland were named for real people.

Then there are things like streets, parks, bridges and tunnels, airports, stadiums, schools and universities, planets and diseases, ministries and businesses - you get the idea..

Lest you think you are any different, ask yourself why people prefer to mark graves with engraved stones and not with full color billboards.

Each time something significant happens we tend to think to ourselves. I will never forget this.

At the moment of the birth of an idea the “nowness” of the event can be so strong that is hard to imagine that we could forget it just days, hours or, more often than we care to admit just minutes later.

Now you are likely thinking about just how often this has happened to you (and wishing you had made a record of it somewhere...)

We are in fact so good at forgetting that we even forget that we forget!

Feel free to respond - if you can remember.