Like many of my neighbors, I seem to be running out of space. You can tell because their garages, already crammed with junk, force them to park their cars in their driveway. It’s a sure sign that their storage is overflowing with “stuff.”
But unlike my neighbors, I don’t need more physical space. Strangely enough, what I’m running out of is mental space.
When you’re born, you’re given a big brain—one that’s empty and spanking clean. As you grow older, you start accumulating things, and like a packrat, you can’t seem to make wise choices about what to keep. So, you hold on to it all.
It starts innocently enough. One day, as a baby, you mumble something that sounds like “miam-miam,” and your mother goes ecstatic. “Did you hear? He said, ‘Mommy!’ What a smart little guy! He’s going to be a doctor, an artist—maybe even a messiah.”
Of course, you have no idea what you said, but because it pleased your mother, you unconsciously stored that little nugget of information. And over the years, more and more piles up: cuss words, foreign words, math, porn, gossip, political nonsense, feelings, colors. Before long, your mental vault is cluttered—overstuffed and for some, even a bit smelly.
The older you get, the more you hoard, until one day your brain, like an exhausted computer, starts coughing and demanding more “lebensraum” (Hello Adolf). “Hey buddy, I have no more space! If you want more flexibility, you’re going to have to clear out some junk—or invade Czechoslovakia.”
And that’s why, as you grow older, you start forgetting things. Your brain does it automatically, tossing out the old to make room for the new.
But now, thanks to AI, the problem is only going to get worse. The tech industry is handing us powerful little gadgets that will do the remembering for us. We won’t need to store anything anymore—our digital servants will handle it all.
So, you think? Big mistake, my friends! Always keep in mind who slew Caesar! His most intimate friends, the keepers of all his secrets!
So don’t laugh at older folks who don’t remember trivial details. As the Montgolfier brothers ever said: “drop stuff, you will gain altitude.”
Alain