‘I can’t think about that right now. If I do, I’ll go crazy. I’ll think about that tomorrow.’
-Scarlett O’Hara, Gone With the Wind
I have often felt like Scarlett. Not so much the civilization-ending chaos and despair, but the feeling of being overwhelmed, and simply unable to process one more thought today.
All too often my mind seems a jumble of different thoughts, ping-ponging one to another. I’ll be writing an email, and remember I need to reschedule a doctor’s appointment, and pick up the phone, the email temporarily forgotten. Then I remember, I need to confirm the babysitter and send a quick text. Or I’ll go upstairs to bring down laundry, and end up watering plants or distracted by the kids, and then come back down without the laundry at all.
My work days seem no exception, always working on one thing, and then being interrupted by an email, the phone, or my own thoughts.
We’re told not to put off what you can do today. I’ve always espoused to the idea of doing more, not leaving things until tomorrow. Sometimes it feels better to get it done quickly today, even if it means not as well, or in a less satisfying way. We’ve all become excellent multi-taskers in our busier than thou society; I’ve often dreamed of a having a body double, so I could get more done. How convenient it would be if I could have a clone to help me? This idea is as satisfying to me as the dream of being in two places at once, recalling straddling the state line as a kid, one foot in PA, and the other triumphantly in MD.
But, it turns out that it’s all a fallacy. We can’t really be in two places at once, or multitask at all; instead our brains switch back and forth between a series of tasks. This shifting is happening so quickly, that to us it may be imperceptible. But, the reality is our brains aren’t proficient at doing this, so we end up spending more time transitioning back and forth between the tasks, losing our train of thought, and then picking it up again. Over time, it can take its toll.
In this same way, our brains can’t process different types of thought at the same time. We all know that tight feeling stress produces. That sense of foreboding, made worse by knowing there isn’t one specific action you can take right now to resolve it. You breathe more shallowly. You may feel slightly nauseous. It’s difficult to focus on other tasks. Your mind wants to churn on the problem with focused intensity, until it seems the most important thing. I know this feeling all too well.
During my holiday break I decided to catch up on some photo projects, updating the kids’ albums. Surprisingly, I couldn’t find a picture of my daughter blowing out her birthday candles. Worse, when I tried to remember, I couldn’t recall what we had done that weekend. As I looked through different folders for the photos, I also discovered some pictures of my son in his infancy, but was shocked I couldn’t really remember those times either.
It made me wonder, how much space is there in our brains? Looking back, much of the past several years has passed in a fog of stress, worry, and work. I realized I wasn’t focused on the kids in the evenings when they were home. My mind was still busy sorting out work issues or fretting over project details I didn’t have control over. Had all that worrying prevented me from making memories of my children over the years?
One line in a song by my husband’s favorite artist, comes to mind:
Worry…Worry, worry, worry, worry…Worry just will not seem to leave my mind alone
-Ray Lamontagne, Trouble
The beats in this song seem to match the timpani in my mind, repeating whatever is troubling me over and over. It is truly difficult to push it aside, even when I know I need to move on and think about something else.
After reading some articles and watching a very interesting TED talk on the subject, I realized it was true. Our brains are very preoccupied when processing stress, part of our fight or flight mechanism. When this interference is occurring, the process by which the pre-frontal cortex creates working memory is disrupted.
Stress related glucocorticoids also impact the ability of the hippocampus to grow new neurons, without which it cannot convert short-term memory to long-term memories. It boils down to, if we are distracted, we aren’t really experiencing that moment live, and can’t be expected to recall it later.
This is really interesting to me. While it’s easy to dismiss living in the moment as philosophy du jour, it becomes a bit more personal when you realize worrying about every insignificant little thing can get in the way of remembering the big things.
Today is my husband’s 40th birthday. While there’s a tendency to see this as a monumental event, equally valid is the viewpoint that it’s just another day among many in a lifetime. All days are equally important in the possibility they hold to experience something truly wonderful and memorable.
It’s a day for celebration, worthwhile of attention, but, also a time to reflect that time is finite, of duration unknown to all of us. Every day is an opportunity to create lasting memories. I’d rather have less to recall, but be able to remember it vividly, with fondness, than cram in so much of everything that I forget the good with the bad.