Gigabytes

The other day I happened to be in the Apple Store, looking at different iTouch options with my son.  Aside from choosing from two colors, we pondered options for the device's memory capacity - 8 Gigabyte (GB), 16 GB, 32 GB or 64 GB.  It did boggle my mind, how such a small device could have that much memory capacity!  We decided, that 16 GB was definitely enough, 64 GB was unimaginable and almost too much.  Who would use it to that extent?  What would you need so much memory on hand for?  I kept thinking more about the concept of memory, external harddrives, with the latter one sometimes referring to a stickie note in my busy days or a way to explain to my boys, why we can't remember everything, and need an external harddrive ourselves, aka a stickie note, a journal or calendar, hoping that my technology jargon would enter their memory... and not the junk folder.

It is a subtle line between remembering something in order to do it,  or to remember something in order to cherish that memory.  We even categorize our memories or place them in the same vicinity in our brain as smell, which sometimes serves as a sort of shortcut or intensifier of memories.  In our fast-paced and multitasking world, we don't always take the time to cherish our memories, remembering serves more the purpose of trying to keep all our plates spinning without forgetting one.

What we also forget, is that memories are being made every minute of our day.  We may not consciously do so, but we have the opportunity every day to create one special moment, that we want to hold on to for future retrieval.  Whether it be sitting around the fire pit in the fall with my family, sipping hot cocoa and roasting marshmallows, or a romantic outing with my husband, a laugh with a friend, snuggling with my pooch and a good book, making that first step towards a new professional endeavor - the list could go on and on - it is a memory, that we each store and cherish in our way, sometimes safer in it's own file, sometimes shared across a network, much like a document on our many electronic devices.  Some files get locked,  others edited, some are only to be viewed and many get lost.  

That iTouch my son decided to buy, might just be one way for him, to make his own memories, but it will never quite replace our wonderful brain, which with the use of all of our senses will make sure that the memory will be as vivid as possible when being surfaced from our neural archives.  Memories can lead to story telling, to healing, to connecting with other people - and there is the technology reference again, "connecting to other people".  Isn't that what we do via our personal and professional networks on the internet every day?  And what about cultivating our memories?  There are some memories, that are definitely always on our personal top ten list, we wage those "classics" against new ones, and thereby change the ranking on the list every day.  Feel uneasy about how quickly technology becomes outdated or needs an upgrade?  Then consider this:  we can upgrade our personal memory for free every day!  I don't even know exactly how many Gigabytes that would be... but it sure sounds like an enormous amount.  Now that is a fantastic deal - don't waste it!  Go for that upgrade and pass it on to others.