Denial Makes the Memory Grow Stronger

1. 

I have previously discussed the analogy of a bucket for our mental faculty of storing information, that is, our memory. In that analogy, I likened the size of the bucket to the sum of our understanding, or conceptual knowledge. Whereas the filling of the bucket itself, I compared to bits of information, or factual knowledge. 

So I concluded that in order to be able to remember more (and forget less), we'd have to get a bigger bucket.  In other words, we'd have to understand more concepts - and avoid overloading our memory with meaningless information, which could overfill the bucket and cause a lot of spillage. 

Now I'm interested in thinking about why our memory does not always work - at least not for our sake - and why we remember certain things and not others. And this has lead me to reflect on the paradox that we remember best those things we try hardest to forget. In other words, denial makes the memory grow stronger. (Pun intended. That famous phrase "distance makes the heart grow fonder" is actually quite relevant here.)*

2. 

If one of your friends had promised to get you a birthday present, and when the day came, he didn't give you any, there are two possibilities why this had happened. It could be that his memory has failed him and he'd totally forgotten it (either his promise, or, your birthday); or it could be that he remembered his promise, but for any reason (like being broke, or too busy) he couldn't afford to fulfill it. 

Of course, if you were to ask him about it, even when he remembered but was not able to do it, your friend would have still told you that he has forgotten about giving you a birthday present. So from this scenario we can look at the two ways to interpret the word 'forget': either as a lapse of memory ("Oh sorry I forgot!"); or, a denial ("Ah, just forget it!").

We could also look at this dichotomy of meaning, as between the passive verb ("I always forget.."); and the active verb ("I must forget it!"). Interestingly, we can be in totally opposite situations and still use the same word. In one situation, we regret not to remember something; whereas in the another, we regret remembering too much.

3.

Maybe we can trick ourselves into remembering any useful information by trying hard - not to remember it, but - to actually forget it. To put it simply: try hard to forget something, and it will stick in your memory. 

___

* When a loved one is not around us, we'd have to try hard to forget that person. Or else it would be too depressing to be constantly aware of that person's absence. Ironically as we found earlier, what happens when we try hard to forget something, is that we remember it even more. Hence, distance makes the heart grow fonder.