MIRACLE OF MEMORY

Reasons to be Grateful

WHEN you want to express an idea, your mind instantly sets in motion a complex intellectual machine. It recalls the desired idea, extracts it from the tangled maze of facts and events in your memory, selects the appropriate words, orders them according to the rules of grammar, and then activates your tongue to speak or your fingers to write. In this way, numerous actions and interactions take place within the mind at an incredibly high speed. Almost all the senses contribute to this process.

The fact is that your mind is filled with countless ideas, but if you have to express even one of them in the English language, you must first select the appropriate words from the jungle of a quarter of a million words which make up the language, after which you must put things in the correct order with unbelievable speed, and only then are you able to utter or write down a meaningful linguistic sequence. This process is unimaginably complex, with numerous known and unknown processes going on in your mind at lightning speed. It is the interaction of these factors which results in meaningful speech or writing.

How does this take place? Recent research shows that there is an incredibly complex system in our mind, which is dependent upon the memory—a miraculous phenomenon of nature. According to Neal Bernard, an Adjunct Associate Professor of Medicine at the George Washington University of School of Medicine, in Washington D.C, “a memory is made by linking two or more of the 100 billion nerve cells in your brain, called neurons, then solidifying the connection so that you can use it later”. Brianne Bettcher, a neuropsychology fellow at the University of California, San Francisco, Memory and Aging Centre says, “your brain continues to develop neurons and build new connections to strengthen memory as you age, a phenomenon called neuroplasticity.”

We humans remember to talk of great miracles but fail to acknowledge the miracle of memory itself bestowed by God upon each one of us. If one were to recognize this miracle as a personal miracle, we will develop such a thrilling sense of gratitude that we would be ashamed of holding on to complaints and negative thoughts in our memory.

We will then want to live with feelings of eternal thankfulness to God which in other words means that we will be peaceful and positive.