Filter Coffee #246

On "Oh! I forgot!"

Bengaluru

Thanks to my regulars, there were some interesting comments left on ‘Leave it’.

• Tarun Kunzru: “There is a wonderful Beatles song - Let it be. This is another word for ‘Leave it’. It's wisdom to ‘buy time’ and ‘sleep over’ a difficult or emotional decision. So we let Mother Nature (reason-led and not emotion-led) settle the issue. By letting the situation tide us over, we cut our losses and avoid digging a bigger hole. As the saying goes, ‘Even this will pass.’”

• Mani Srinivasan shares his experience: “I could relate to every one of these situations—seeing people spit, pee in public and breaking traffic rules. I have the habit of arguing with all these people, only to hear my family whispering in my ears, ‘leave it.’ I remember a person who was driving in the wrong direction near Sadashivnagar coming menacingly towards me when I questioned him. One of my New Year's resolutions is to keep calm and move on in such situations, but I still find myself struggling to ‘leave it’ when I see the civic and public apathy.”

• Damandeep: “Sometimes we have thoughts like this, but the effort and time it would take to undertake the act have to be assessed based on the outcome expected. So if it is not worth our time and effort, then we will always leave it or let it be! Time is a precious thing, and we would rather spend it wisely and on things that give us happiness and are worth the outcome. This comment on this post, and also reading this post, was worth the time and effort, so I’m not letting it be.”

• S G Murali: “I recall two slightly conflicting statements. The first one is ‘When you see a mad, evil man, just move away.’ There is another from the Thiru Kural which says, ‘If one knows something is wrong and keeps quiet about it, it is worse than doing something wrong.’ Thiruvalluvar says, ‘Don’t leave it.’ In corporate life, when we find someone talking nonsense, we prefer to say, ‘Leave it. He will not understand’. If we feel the mistake can be corrected, we make efforts. But if we feel it is a waste of time, we say ‘leave it’ and walk away. Amazing, Pras, how you can come up with an interesting write-up.”

🤔 Oh! I forgot!

I don’t think there is a refrain more common than ‘I forgot’. We hear it all the time from people of all age groups. I often forget where I kept my phone, and worse still, I forget it is on silent mode and can’t trace it by dialing that number from another phone. Forgetting what was said or done moments ago can be quite frustrating. It is not always an age-related problem. It can happen even to younger people. The other day, I kept my spectacles on the bed and a moment later sat on them. In hindsight, not a place to keep my specs.

Memory has a use-it-or-lose-it quality. We are asked to play chess, scrabble, Sudoku, bridge, and other memory-enhancing games and avoid sitting glued to TV. We watch a movie or a game, but then we forget about it the next day. To exaggerate, sometimes you don't even remember that the butler did it.

Transience is the tendency to forget. It is said that forgetting is not a bad thing, as you tend to erase it from your hard disk (the brain) because it is not something you would want to remember all your life. Your birthday, as well as those of your children’s and your wife are etched in your memory. Yet, as it happens to many, the wedding anniversary date somehow eludes, as it does, to me. Strange how the mind differentiates the dates. Fortunately, Google Calendar does remind you of the dates you wish to be reminded of, but even then, transience can happen. For example, I forgot to order something online for my wife, and a day later she asked me, “Did you?” All I could tell her was, “I forgot to tell you that I forgot”.

During my school & college days, we had to carry our ‘hall ticket’, and without it, we could not hope to get in, even if the invigilator was a relative! The disastrous effect of forgetting something makes one make an effort to remember. I had one such experience with my passport while I was in Mumbai. It was a last-minute decision to send me to the US, and it was a rush job, packing and getting the papers ready. After reaching the check-in counter, I discovered that I did not have my passport with me. Fortunately, my paranoia and the habit of getting to the airport sooner than required helped me, as I had intuitively asked the driver to wait till I checked in. I sent him rushing back home to pick up the passport that I had left on the bed, and he returned just before the counter closed. Now I keep checking, even after the plane has taken off! Perhaps paranoia is an antidote to transient amnesia?

Forgetting can be disastrous if the situation is irretrievable. Like in the case of someone whom I knew well who got out of the taxi at the airport but left a small bag containing the ticket, passport and foreign currency on the back seat. One cannot relate to the sinking feeling he had unless one has gone through a similar experience. Seshu, my lawyer friend in Mysore, told me of a journey by train for a wedding. They had a steel trunk that contained all the valuables, which they shoved under the lower berth when they got into their 3-tier compartment. They had to change the train at some point, and due to the late arrival of their train, there was a mad rush to get off and catch the next one. Yes, you guessed it right. The trunk was left behind and was lost forever. Imagine the agony and anguish!

What’s in a name? It means everything if you were supposed to remember it. Sometimes it is at the tip of your tongue, but your memory lets you down. It has happened to me many times. I introduce my wife to someone known to me, and she turns to me and asks that dreaded question, “And he is?”. Fortunately, sometimes that person bails me out by volunteering information without my squirming. At other times, sensing that I have forgotten, the person tells my wife with vicarious pleasure, “I am too small a man for Mr. Prasanna to remember my name.” This name thing is the most embarrassing of all memory lapses.

It is a medical fact that there is a strong neural connection between the brain and the feet. One would imagine the brain taking control and assisting the feet in doing their task, like walking, running, etc. But have you ever experienced, at any time, your feet taking control and creating brain fog? Yes, it is called stage fright or performance anxiety. At times, it creeps up on you after you have begun in good earnest. You go up there to talk, sing or perform, and your tongue dries up, your feet tremble, and your brain cuts off all the creativity that you had needed to do what you had intended. I found the medical term for this condition. It is ‘ankyloglossia’, quite a mouthful.

‘Absent-Minded professor’ is the common expression to describe a forgetful person, even if he is not a professor. The movie by the same name was released in 1961, and as a kid, I remember clutching my stomach and laughing with tears in my eyes. I wonder how many of you have seen it? If not, do watch it on YouTube. If one finds it full of childish humour, one may have forgotten the child in oneself.

You are absent-minded if you are present physically but not registering a thing, or half registering it. I am sure you have seen people with whom you are talking to sometimes sport a blank expression. They are zoning out. It is a mental disengagement. The person is neither attentive nor mentally present. I’m super confident that each of my readers has at some point or the other zoned out during a speech or performance.

Brain fatigue induces sleep or forces you to take refuge in your cell phone. There are umpteen situations when we have been busy texting during a boring performance. You recollect none of the actors or the plot. You consciously choose to forget, simply because you don’t consider it worth remembering. You might have seen people quietly slipping out of the auditorium. They prefer to do something else more useful or entertaining than endure a sub-par performance.

Pretending to forget is a cognitive skill that people deploy as and when convenient. Selective amnesia has a completely different meaning in psychology, but we use it to mean ‘being conveniently forgetful’. I am sure you have come across people who pretend not to remember something if recounting it is inconvenient or causes discomfort. It can also be used to avoid responsibility or accountability. Imagine a situation where you are asked to confirm an occurrence or a conversation, but you fear that it may drag you into something controversial. So, you opt to say that you were not paying attention and that you can’t recollect what exactly happened.

Why do we find it difficult to forget unpleasant memories? Why do we hang on to some of them?

In March 2021, I wrote FC 36, ‘Forget & Forgive’. Please don’t forget to read it 😀 🔗Here’s the link.

Oh! I almost forgot! Here’s some funny stuff:

There was an elderly couple who, in their old age, noticed that they were getting a lot more forgetful, so they decided to go to the doctor.

The doctor told them that they should start writing things down so they don't forget.

They went home, and the old lady told her husband to get her a bowl of ice cream. "You might want to write it down," she said. The husband said, "No, I can remember that you want a bowl of ice cream."

She then told her husband she wanted a bowl of ice cream with whipped cream. "Write it down," she told him, and again he said, "No, no, I can remember: you want a bowl of ice cream with whipped cream."

Then the old lady said she wants a bowl of ice cream with whipped cream and a cherry on top. "Write it down," she told her husband, and again he said, "No, I got it. You want a bowl of ice cream with whipped cream and a cherry on top."

So he goes to get the ice cream and spends an unusually long time in the kitchen, over 30 minutes. He comes out to his wife and hands her a plate of eggs and bacon.

The old wife stares at the plate for a moment, then looks at her husband and asks, "Where's the toast?"

Dear readers, this is a free-to-read post. Please don’t forget to share it with others if you remember their names. See you next week, Ciao!