Stuff that I’ve Noticed #10 – Across my Mind

There are many phrases we use frequently if not every day. It ran across my mind is but one of these commonplaces we spout without giving a thought. Normal people don’t spend a lot of time subjecting them to analysis. Well I never claimed to be normal; a highly over-rated state, in my opinion.

This is something you’ll learn when you read my memoirs.

NOTE: This piece is a bit shorter on words than my usual monthly offering because of the footnoted articles linked herein. I encourage you to click on and read them both.

I don’t know if it’s the proliferation of data/sensory input promulgated by the saturation of our environment by electronic, web connected devices (1) – I do suspect that these are factors – or the mind jam brought on by advancing age but the condition of which I write most often is not, as is assumed, cognitive decline. It’s more like cognitive overload caused by the fact that as we grow older we have so much information in our heads it sometimes takes a while for our consciousness to retrieve a name or an event or a fact that we know that we know simply because the “file drawers” of our minds are so full of accumulated data. (2)

Whichever of these – or something else altogether – causes it, once you are over fifty or sixty this happens. People mistakenly attribute this syndrome to senility. Certainly a fair number of people do become senile and lose cognitive ability but that’s not what I’m talking about here.

Reading the study cited in footnote 2 had a profound effect on me. Like most of us “seniors”, before seeing these data (“Data” (like “media”) is a plural word and is almost always used incorrectly as singular.) I too assumed that I was slipping a bit so I found the article both relieving and reassuring. And it altered my behavior.

A quote from the article: Said Dr. Ramscar, “The brains of older people do not get weak. On the contrary, they simply know more.”

Before I knew what that study revealed I had developed that concept as a whimsical personal theory but had no idea that it was actually true. Now that I realize that it’s factual I do not, as I used to, go immediately to a search engine or imdb.com for an answer. I sit on the question for a while and most of the time the answer comes to me. I knew it. I was aware that I knew it. I simply could not immediately recall it. My brain merely needed some time to rummage through the many drawers of data files until it found the seemingly forgotten fact.

So if you’re one of us codgers and often notice that you cannot retrieve the answer to a question and you know that you know it, take heart. You’re probably not senile you simply know too much.

1 See http://www.economist.com/node/18895468
2 See https://www.agingcare.com/Articles/seniors-brains-slower-because-of-too-much-information-167093.htm

And while we’re on the subject of memory, I spent three years remembering and writing my personal history, aka an autobiography. If you’re interested you will find my memories here.