Remember

There is a scene in 'Twelve Angry Men' where one juror is questioned by another on his activities of the past several days in order to prove the point that it is often difficult to do so. I have seen the movie plenty of times (and don't imagine I could stand it even one more time) but that point never really hit home, although I basically found it true. Perhaps then my events calendar was too easy to keep track of, and I was then perhaps more possessed of a sound mind in matters of memory.

I recently made the effort to remember what I had done each of the past seven days, the purpose of this being to dredge a few ideas that I might be able to write about for this very blog. I started off well enough, recalling fairly well what I had done that day and the day before. It continued to come in fits and starts, but before I was three-quarters of the way there, I began to blank. I haven't been insanely busy. I've merely had an ordinary (by my standards; by those of others, maybe even sub-ordinary) week.

I did wonder just why this might have been so. I contemplated and discarded the possibility that it was too much to remember, obviously. I have not quite finished with the notion that even at my young age my ability to remember has deteriorated. You'll recall perhaps that I wrote of memory being degraded by possession of smart phones and the like, and I have not been as good to my body and mind as I might have been in my adult years.

I will hope that there is nothing abnormal about this struggle. I furthermore hope that I can improve at such a pedestrian task of memory and thought. If I can, then I am by no means a hopeless case who must learn to live within such reduced cognitive means. I can eventually learn to deal with that, and perhaps even enjoy the confounding of those around me with my frailties (if in fact the same frailties do not render me oblivious of their effects), but not this year.