Everyday Canvas

Memory

Prompt: "If any one faculty of our nature may be called more wonderful than the rest, I do think it is memory. There seems something more speakingly incomprehensible in the powers, the failures, the inequalities of memory, than in any other of our intelligences. The memory is sometimes so retentive, so serviceable, so obedient; at others, so bewildered and so weak; and at others again, so tyrannic, so beyond control!” says Fanny in Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park.
Do you agree with her and what are your thoughts on memory?

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Memory is the faculty by which the brain stores and remembers information. It also encodes what it stores; therefore, it is an integral part of our perception, even if most of the stored memory lies outside of our awareness and might be accessed either after a sudden crisis or by hypnosis to decode what was stored.

That is why it “is sometimes so retentive, so serviceable, so obedient; at others, so bewildered and so weak; and at others again, so tyrannic, so beyond control.”

It is beyond our control because, sometimes, an event or faculty juggles the brain and we recall at the most inopportune times what we don’t want or need to recall for what we recall affects our behavior and mood.

Yet, imagine not being able to recall anything or recall things by pieces, only to forget them. It is a well-known fact that when the memory part of the brain is affected, patients may even forget to eat or take care of their bodies. If our memory is affected, we wouldn’t be able to remember words to write or talk effectively. If our memory would be affected, we wouldn’t recall our loved ones, our beliefs, or our experiences. For all those things, I think Jane Austen’s Fanny was absolutely correct in saying what she said.