Memories

The moment may be temporary but the memory is forever.

~Bud Meyer

What Is Memory?

What is memory?  Not a storehouse, not a trunk in the attic, but an instrument that constantly refines the past into a narrative , accessible and acceptable to oneself.

~Stanley Kauffmann

Memory

Life is all memory except for the one present moment that goes by so quick you can hardly catch it going.

~Tennassee Williams

The Brain

The human brain is an amazing mechanism.  It's about half the size of a grapefruit, it's capable of recording 800 memories per second for 75 years without exhausting itself.  It stores between 10 billion and 100 billion pieces of information (depending on our age).  The human brain retains everything it takes in and never forgets anything; even though we don't or can't always recall the information, it's always on permanent file in our brain.

There is an myth that we only use 10% of our brain - it may be based on some old research that showed that only 10% of the neurons in the brain are firing at any given time. Another thought is that it arose from a study that showed that the average person develops only 10 percent of his or her latent mental ability. Whatever the case -what all of this shows is that there is tremendous potential in our brains, that is often untapped and untrained.  Imagine what can be done if we tried...

For example, conductor Arturo Toscanini literally conditioned his mind to store, organize, and recall musical information.  He memorized every note, for every musical instrument in 250 symphonies and 100 operas!

The lesson is that we can do far more than we are capable of, so ask yourself, what could you train your brain to do?