Forgetful. Huh?

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We are living in a world that is bringing us new stories, new things almost every minute of the day, even those among us with the best memories may find themselves being more forgetful than they would like to be...

As it turns out, the better we are able to ‘keep up’, the smaller the world seems to us. And as the world gets to be smaller and smaller, we tend to look around for more things to do, more things to hear and to see... Fast-paced, always on-the-move, yesterday’s stories are old news. And who wants to remember that?
An argument can be made that we feel more and more that we are citizens of the world, rather than citizens of any one specific Country. We seem to be geared towards a global community...
And in this fast-paced, global community forgetfulness has become one of the mechanisms through which we cope.

Yet, the more we focus on the global aspects of our lives, the more we may forget about the actual community we live in. We may have a tendency to worry more about the effects an oil spill or nuclear disaster will have on our lives, than about recycling the things we discard in our day-to-day lives.
Always looking forward, we have no desire to look back.

And in this duality, forgetfulness as a coping mechanism can turn against us...

As long as we are happily focusing on the global society, we may forget the things that are ‘yesterday’s news’. In essence we have taught ourselves to do so in order to be able to handle the new information we have to deal with on a daily basis.
Then when we feel we want to step out of the race that gets you noticed on the global platform, may get us into a place that we had forgotten about. A smaller place. A community of friends and neighbors. In this community there may be ‘small’ stories ~ stories about what is happening with the kids and the grandkids. We may sell the big house in favor of an apartment. And bit by bit our world is getting smaller; something that may bring back memories from when we grew up. Memories of a different time and place ~ memories of a certain innocence...

In order to cope with these changes, we may use that same coping mechanism that has served us so well in the past ~ we may become forgetful...

Yes, I do realize that there often is a medical reason for the ‘forgetfulness’ that some people start suffering from as the years go by.
Still, it makes me wonder; if we were to create a greater balance between global and community perspectives; if we were to live life at that pace that is uniquely ours, rather than adapting to the pace at which global information comes our way every day ~ would we be as apt to be forgetful?
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