Memorize

Never memorize something that you can look up.- Einstein

It's such a curious and wonderful thing to meditate about because there was a time when I was younger, and when someone would say something… and you, or rather, one would get a feeling in their gut that it was incorrect.

That “my memory” of a fact, a definition, or a quote was incorrect.

We would say, look it up, bring me the dictionary, bring me the thesaurus, give me that play and or book. And that gut feeling would serve as the catalyst of the question, begetting an answer.

Look it up in a book.

And then the internet, which was in the beginning a wicked and wild place.

So much so that even when I was in undergrad, one could not even cite it in a paper as a resource.

That being said, it came upon all of us that we would say, Google it…ask the internet.

And now, as it happens, we live in a time where we will say, look it up.

And an article can be changed, a post can be taken down, or people can say, I was just kidding…

And unfortunately, we've come upon a time where people have reported that their Kindle is now “showing updated” information…

So we cannot say look it up in a book…

Sure, it's so nuanced. It's so small and … yet what can we do, if I cannot say “look it up on the internet”, for it might have been just a … generated concept that had nothing to do with actual reality.

So then my gut feeling has been tampered with, and if we say, “well, I read about it”, “listen to the audiobook,” …here's my Kindle, but it's been updated.

Then once again, the gut feeling, the knowledge that I know 2 plus 2 is 4, is interrupted.

So if asked this question 10 years ago, “Never memorize something you can look up”, I would say, true.

Because memory is a muscle, it is not a faucet, in which one can “turn it on”, and memory comes out.

So we must be conscious of our mental maps and how we organize our memory and what we choose to keep.

This is an interesting conundrum we will find ourselves in because what are we to do when there's no capacity to cross-reference?

When facts are not things?

When two plus two can, for some people, say it's five…

And then if enough people say it's five, well, isn't it five?

And aren't you the weird one to think it's four?

…We have a conundrum.

And as I meditate on this, I think, well, this can escalate quickly.

And then I realize it's always darkest before the dawn, and I see this is a beautiful opportunity for humanity.

For we then must be living memory, we must hold on to reality and truth, though falseness stares us in the face.

And when 2 plus 2 is stated as 5, told that it's 5, written down that it is 5, we as humanity, must hold truth.

And I think that is a beautiful, invigorating opportunity that we as humanity has to build that mental muscle and become living memories of truth as we broach the concerning conflict of falsities under the guise of reality.

And that's just that's what I've been meditating on as of late.