One of the most difficult things about growing in maturity (not older) is the fading of our memories, eyesight, hearing and many other parts of our bodies that seem to have just decided they are too tired to continue.
Take our glasses for instance. We come in from the garage and ten minutes later we are combing the entire house looking for our glasses that we know are around here someplace. We had to have them to drive into the garage, so they can’t be lost.
However, the real problem is that we need them to be able to see things, which in this case is our glasses. So, we are looking for the item we need in order to find the item we need.
Makes perfect sense, doesn’t it?
Of course, the corollary to this is that when we lost (or misplaced) our glasses, we also laid our keys down somewhere. Instead of hanging our keys up in the same place, year after year, we lay them down in some new place and can’t find them, because why?
Because we have lost our glasses.
Next up on my list is the horrible practice I seem to have of saving things in a special place. Here is how this seems to work. You have object “A” which has been in place “B” for over 25 years. But you get fearful that (1) someone will steal it or (2) you will forget where you have it stored. This is some object or item which you only need once every 10 years or so.
So, logic demands that you move it to some safe place. Some really safe place.
Now there are only the 2 of you in the house and she definitely can be trusted, can’t she?
I mean you have only lived with her for ‘x’ number of years and she has helped you through thick and thin as well as had your children, but you can’t be too careful these days, can you?
Now we move object “A” to its new place of “X” . There, now it’s safe.
But wait, there’s more. Of course, there is always more.
2 days after you have ‘safely’ hidden this object in place “X” ( which you have not needed for years, you now need it for some unknown reason.
Of course, you look where it WAS stored for the past 25 years, but alas, it is not there to be found, is it?
No, remember, you moved it to a really safe place and now you can’t recall exactly where that new safe place is located.
So, you go and buy a new ‘something’.
Now you have 2 ‘somethings’ and you only need 1. But you’re good to go, aren’t you?
Three days later you open a drawer and what is hidden in the back of this drawer? Why the first ‘something’ you hid from yourself. Now you have 2 of something that you only use every 5 or 10 years.
This practice ties directly in with our habit of throwing things away we haven’t used in 10 years and we think we don’t need them any longer and next week we must definitely need them.
An elderly mind is a terrible thing to waste, isn’t it?
Now, here’s my answer to why all of this happens to us.
Back when I was 10 or 12, I was a happy camper. No worries, no trouble, I had a roof over my head, a paper route, a cool bicycle and a girlfriend. What more could I ask for?
But what I didn’t have was a lot of knowledge, experience, emotional baggage, worries, concerns, heartaches, misery, pain, money issues, relationship issues and so on and on.
As you know the brain is a fairly small organ and I think we have a limited amount of storage capacity in there for all of the stuff we keep trying to keep track of.
Kind of like a file cabinet. To get to some file marked “Z” you have to go all the way through all of the other folders to get what you need, don’t you? I bet you’ve had to upgrade your computer memory over the years, haven’t you?
So, when you get to be our ages, our brains are getting pretty full of stuff that we have accumulated over all of these years.
Some of it we need, but a lot of it we don’t need.
I am working on a way to dislodge all of the stuff I don’t need from my head to make use of the space for my current status.
I am planning on writing it all down.
Just as soon as I find my glasses.
More next week….
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