I recently cleaned out a file on one of my computers which contained a number of personal items from my children’s younger years — among them, several invitations to theme birthday parties of which I have almost no memory. I brought up first one, then another, asking myself, ‘did we really have a Mean Girls birthday party? a dinosaur party?’ It’s unsettling to have no recollection of these milestone family events!
I assert that I actually have a very good memory (my family is always astonished by the specific details I can dredge up about people, places and incidents in our past), but that there’s just too much to remember! Even precious memories are constantly being crowded out by new events and information — like that scene in Inside Out where workers weed out the old to make space for the new in long term memory.
The process is inevitable, but I wish I had better conscious control of it — instead of agonizing over that speeding ticket, the time my boss reamed me out, or the argument with my spouse, how much better it would be to savor recollections of those birthday parties!
Linnetontheleaf 
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