Forgetting

Edits: 1
Updated: 19 Dec 2022

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Sometimes, I look through the "Memories" Apple Photos presents to me and I'm delightuflly surprsied by how quickly I can place myself back in the moment a picture was taken within.

This feeling is part relief, "Sigh, I still do remember things."

This fear of forgetting often surfaces for me when I encounter new information, a new feeling, anything abstract really.

In these moments, I've developed a reflex to document that thing before it has the opportunity to slip through my grasp and become unretrievable.

Curiously, when I look around the at the objects that surround me in the room I'm sitting in right now, I'm flush with memories.

What gives? These physical objects have naturally accrued meaning and become rich stores of memories I can retrieve. Where might this fear of forgetting be coming from?

One thought: the tools I'm using to consume are not necessarily causing me to forget, but preventing me from making memories with/within them.

They are all flow. They afford saving without a complimentary process for making meaning. They default to newness, feeds. No spontaneous encounters. I see something resonant, save it somewhere, offload it from my short-term memory, and get back to scrolling without ever encountering that thing again. So, it remains unconnected, unlinked, and quickly fades away unsopported by a lattice of links.

Memory gone.

I have more to say here, but the important thing to me in this moment is the freedom from thinking that it is me who is breaking. It is not me. It is the tools themselves and I need more from them.