Lost in the filter

Popular portable puzzles providing positively perplexing posers, presenting persistently provoking problems, producing a pleasant panacea to people possessing, patience, perspicacity  and painstaking propensity.

Why on earth does this jingle remain in my memory when so much else is lost.

It came on the back of a puzzle we used to play with when we were young. It consisted of guiding a small ball bearing around a sort of maze to reach a hole in the centre of the maze for the ball bearing to settle. On the back of the puzzle was this word poser which has lodged with me for over 60 years.

Given this happened in my mind, if one could unravel the mechanism and apply it to learning in general, then one might be onto something !!  Alas, many of the things I would have benefited from remembering haven't stayed with me and so it's down to, what stimulates the mind to tag that particular moment, this is what stimulates the memory. 

Shocks, pain, pleasure, unusual events out of keeping with the norm must require the brain to create a file but none of these conform to remembering something on the back of something, so trivial.

My memory generally, is poor. There is so much of my childhood of which I only have the vaguest memory. Friends can relate events we enjoyed together of which I can't start to imagine

Even memories of my parents and the things they observed of my Mom and Dad are only seen by me through a mist and have no clear definition.

Even the events in my children's development are misty, whilst my wife has crystal clear recall.

Does this mean that I have always been, too inward, too introverted to notice others with any clarity, too self centred perhaps. 

I'm no psychologist but if I were to have exhibited this instinct to filter everything through my own prism of what is good, bad, useful then it wouldn't have left much time to consolidate and remember what was actually going on around me.

We are born as we are, it's no use wishing otherwise. The advantages of being self absorbed is that one develops perspective, specific to ones-self into which one allows others in, on terms !

One could have a tendency to be critical, forming judgements, without wishing harm. One always has the default position, to draw back in on ones-self if criticism becomes a slanging match.  

As with other emotions, they are evaluated not for their specific generosity but for their value. 

Not as a value for self aggrandisement but for the quality of their perception by the other person.

It's this weighing of value and evaluating everything in a quasi intellectual sense that disconnects the observer from much of what is happening. 

The advantage is that there is a lot of reflection going on, the disadvantage is there is a filter and much is lost in the filter !!