Memories...Where are the Corners of My Mind?

My good friend Miruspeg posted this week "Please Don't Ask Me For More Detail!" about all of the information we might know, do know, do not know and should know about our world. See her post to get the "details". My initial smart alec comment to her post was "that is not my type of intelligence".

She listed bits of info in her data bank, a few interesting ones from childhood and then challenged me further..."So what exactly was the nature of the Palestinian nation before the formation of Israel? Why were negotiations with the IRA suddenly successful?" and posed the question: "Should we feel embarrassment about these gaps in our knowledge?"

So here are my thoughts:
My husband has a great memory for certain kinds of information. He remembers important dates in history, Presidents' years in office, and box scores and stats for athletes and teams. He remembers the dates of every family move and when each child did what. He knows geographical facts such as where all of the countries are located, their capitals, names of multiple mountains and bodies of water. He knows phone numbers..at one time he knew the phone number for every member of our congregation. He even knew the number at the Holiday Inn in another random city! (I had to ask about that one and he did a wedding there one time and remembered the phone number!)
Now...that is a good memory you say...BUT he also has misplaced more pairs of sunglasses than I can count, forgets to mail bills, forgets to call to make appointments, and forgets to post his receipts in the record book.
I on the other hand could not tell you a single important date in history by the year label. I can tell you how the people felt, I can tell you what I was doing when it happened and I can probably tell you which news broadcaster told about it. I can see the images of what was experienced.

For instance, when the NASA Space Shuttle Challenger exploded in the atmosphere I was folding my daughter's baby laundry in the den of our home in MWC, OK, it was in the morning, Gary G. was wallpapering my kitchen, Tom Brokaw broke the news as we were watching it happen and one of the astronauts was his good friend. Christa McAuliffe was the teacher on board and her parents were watching in stunned disbelief. Her children were elementary age or younger. I cannot tell you the date. (I just looked it up..1986)

I do think we all have a different type of intelligence for how we remember, memorize or grasp information. Another individual might remember the mission of that NASA journey, the other names of the astronauts aboard, how many and so on.

Teachers have long been taught that in order to "teach" our children information that we want them to grasp and remember we have to teach to that child's "intellegence". That means using a variety of methods to teach the same information.

I will say that in addition to how we learn, it also matters that in today's world there is so much more to know and remember. The reason I think that we don't know all of those wonderful details that Miruspeg mentioned is because when we were young, much of that was not in the text books or even on the education radar for us to get. Some of the information about the economy, science, environment and even history was simply not known, labeled, or even written about then.

My graduate school education was outdated by 5 years at the time I graduated due to the lag in publishing the updated information.

So I will say this... I feel I remember less as I get older, but maybe it is that information is coming so fast and there is so much to know and even with this wonderful internet which did not exist when I was growing up, we cannot possibly give our attention to all of it. That is why we depend on each other to share the important things when we need to know it and when it is useful.
I know more about prostate cancer now that I did two months ago, and I know more about breast cancer since my mom had it 5 years ago. I know more about hearing loss than the average person but I can't tell you much about the ends and outs of blindness. I can tell you more about sustainability and carbon footprints than I could a year ago and I can tell you how to add an html code to your blog. I can tell you alot about child development and I know more about the use of fertilizer to make a bomb since the OKC bombing. I know more today about the Middle East now than I did 5 years ago, I learn more each day but I will not become an expert on the ends and outs of why this or that is working or not working. I will depend on someone else for those details.

So to respond to my friend's wonderful post about "detail", "knowledge" and "memory". I think we cannot know it all, but we should know about our immediate surroundings, pay attention to those we love and live around and care about their lives. We should be informed about the issues surrounding our local and national governments and the "facts" that guide us to full participation in elections and policies. We should be aware and have an understanding of our planet and our own impact on it, and we should know as much as we can about the faiths and paradigms of our brothers and sisters around the world.

We cannot know each and every fact, if we did we would be holed up in a room and not out living the abundant life God intended. We can depend on each other to pose the great questions, provided us help in understanding and live each day with empathy for each other.

Abundance is...knowing what you need to know when you need to know it.