CHAPTER- 79
AGE
Must we accept a decrease in our efficiency, as we grow older?
This question which confronts me a dozen times a day is usually asked by people who have passed their fiftieth birthday. Younger people are not much concerned about the future of their brain cells, and they do not realise that their own memory will not always remain so reliable as it is today.
Memorising is partly a physiological and partly a psychological process; and this dualism is responsible for the innumerable varieties of ways in which our memory works.
In the physiological sense memory rests on pathways connecting our brain cells, and both the quantity and the firmness of these pathways are decisive for its functioning. As we grow older, these brain-paths become less firm, and there comes a time when the process of forgetting proceeds more quickly than the process of learning.
While such unwelcome reversal invariably happens near the end of a lifetime, there is much we can do to delay its occurrence. It is certainly not coincidence that many people who use their brain more than an average person, keep their retentive and productive ability up to an extremely old age.
Think of Bernard Shaw, of Goethe, of the Thomas Edison. It would be a fallacy to think that in order to take proper care of our brain cells we should spare them every effort and preserve them unused. Just the contrary holds true. You can train your brain as you train your muscles, and you can prove this to your satisfaction by simple tests while you go through the exercises described in this book. You will see that experiments, which call for effort when tried for the first time, become easy when you repeat them, and after a while you can hardly understand why they had required so much effort at all.
It is not enough to have a good mind; the main thing is to use it well.
-Rene Descartes
If we realise that memory can be developed like a muscle, we must also accept the truth that its efficiency will slacken like a muscle if it is not properly used. We all know that after an illness, which keep us in bed for several weeks, walking is very difficult.
The muscles of the legs forget how to move, and we have to relearn walking as a little tot first masters the skill.
Why, then, should we be astonished when the same thing happens to our memory- when it loses its reliability if we do not use it? And yet the average adult is always afraid to trust his memory. There are notebooks and calendars, appointment books and telephone list, memorandum slips and desk notes all destined to unburden our memory and therefore all working in the wrong direction.
Thorndike, who devoted much time to tests concerning memory and age, found that there is no natural reason for a decline, as we grow older except in the latest years of our lives.
If our memory weakens before that time, we must blame ourselves. Let us admit that after we have left school we usually haven’t bother very much about learning anything- that is, learning in the actual sense of the word, not just reading, which is merely passive and receptive.
In practical adult life, except in acting and similar occupations ,there is neither inducement nor a motive for learning anything word to word. That in itself involves the loss of good memory techniques, which are connected only with steady practice. Still, this would not be decisive if we a balanced it, at least, by remembering all little things which occur in our daily business and social life. But, as I stated before, we are too much afraid to “burden our memory” and many of us consider it a waste of time to remember names and addresses, telephone numbers and appointments, which are so “much easier” jotted down and looked up in notebooks.
Give me a lever long enough and a prop strong enough. I can single handedly move the world.
-Archiemdes 100
If they try to remember something once in a while, they are apt to forget it. As a consequence, they distrust their memory still more and they write down still more. In the end, they are astonished to find their memory failing them entirely, and they do not realise that they have only themselves to blame for this steady downward trend of memory and efficiency.
All this, apart from physiological reasons, clearly explains the fact that older people often forget important things which happened last month or even last week, while they remember perfectly every detail, even of unimportant events which took place thirty or forty years ago.
Among those whom I like, I can find no common denominator,
But among those, whom I love, I can; all of them make me laugh.
- W.H. Auden
People take daily walks when it would be “much easier” to use the car or take a bus, because they know that walking is healthier and they wish to increase or at least keep up their muscular strength. On the other hand, they write down every little reminder, thus steadily decreasing their powers of memory.
CHAPTER- 80