Finding my breathing space amid information explosion

Spice of Life: What if my brain runs out of space like a hard drive? Where will I store fresh memories that are stacking up?

As I reach for the newspaper this morning, I can’t help wondering if my saturated brain needs more stimulation! The 1,200g vital organ, the seat of intelligence and the real crowning glory, is an endless library with overflowing shelves.

Looking back at life, it does seem like my mind has consumed more information than what could be digested, leading to the queer problem of ‘infobesity’. (Representational photo)

Looking back at life, it does seem like my mind has consumed more information than what could be digested, leading to the queer problem of ‘infobesity’. As if the long years of student life when it endured the sheer volume of content wasn’t enough, I chose varied subjects in my teaching years, too. Along with business studies and economics that I was qualified to teach, during the interview itself, I gleefully requested for history and political science, the two most content-heavy subjects. Thereafter, I dived so deep into these subjects while teaching that names, such as Robert Mugabe and Kwame Nkrumah, sounded more familiar than those of the neighbours.

Since my childhood, the brain has been busy storing names, places, lyrics, books and authors, important dates, kitchen hacks, basic medical knowledge, home remedies and all information necessary to keep up with our lives, our children and parents, friends, and TV shows. Along with facts, the mind has also been assaulted with pseudo facts, jibber-jabber and rumours, too.

After half a lifetime of grabbing every bit of knowledge floating about, the data smog in my head seems just as smothering as the smog that is expected to engulf our state at this time of the year.

Plus, my brain is paying the price for having a photographic memory. Though, it is fun to recount to friends the bittersweet but trivial memories associated with them, (“….then you said this and you were wearing that”), I now wonder how many gigabytes of space such memories must be occupying in my brain. What if it runs out of space like a hard drive? Where will I store fresh memories that are stacking up?

On top of it, the Swiss army knife of all gadgets that my phone is, subjects me to more new information in a day than a person in the middle ages in his entire life. This information overload (or perhaps filter-failure) has scattered my thoughts and is taking me off my game.

Just a couple of months ago, I was able to dissect the Israel-Palestine conflict. And wasn’t that me who was recently elucidating to a class why Kodak and Nokia failed! I could fill up pages to describe the Belgian model of power sharing. All this knowledge seems to have slipped through a sieve. What is the point in storing information if I cannot retrieve it when needed, like while indulging in a heated online debate.

I should readjust my focus and reduce the things to the manageable minimum.

Just as a good farmer leaves a piece of land fallow to retain its fertility, I would do well to shut my mind to more onslaught of information for a while. For the timebeing, I am no longer interested to know whether the coffee beans at my favourite restaurant come from Columbia or Brazil or whether my face cream has red algae extracts.

I will try to be zen-like and let go of the need to know everything. Enlightenment through ignorance! rupymand@gmail.com

The writer is a Jalandhar-based freelance contributor