When Memory Fails: Coping with Forgetting the Important

As human as we are, there are a lot of things we go wrong at. Be it making mistakes at petty stuff, not knowing our way around things or even forgetting important occasions or activities in our lives. We are all forgetful sometimes for so many reasons but , once it starts getting too much, you know something is wrong.

I bet we have all forgotten our school homework in the house before be it intentionally or unintentionally, but at the end of the day, we still forgot it and that’s part of being human. Aside this, there’s a lot more stuff each and everyone of us has forgotten before. If there’s one thing I always forget to do, it’s to eat. I could literally go a whole day without eating and I wouldn’t even know. It got to a time I had to make a mental note to set alarms for my meals because I sometimes get so occupied by my daily activities. Today, I’m doing a lot better but I wouldn’t say my eating habit is the best.

Forgetfulness is a part of human nature but there are something things you will forget about on a normal day that can cost you so much. Once, I was in a compound house with these ladies and one of them kept beans on the fire and forgot about it. She slept and at around 12am the whole house was smokey. I had to step out of my room to find out if something was burning and I met other tenants also outside. We had to move to their room and scream out their names before they woke up to turn the gas stove off. This act of forgetfulness could have cost us our lives that day, but we thank God for saving us all.

I’ve also heard parents talking about forgetting to pick up their kids from school and it was really funny cos my parents never forgot to pick me up from school. But the one day my mom forgot to bring my breakfast to school, I run out of school to the house and I had all the teachers running after me.Sigh. The lengths we go to because someone forgot about us or something important.

I’ve also been forgetful before but I would say I rarely forget stuff. The one time I forgot something, I fucked up a lot of things and since that day, I made sure to set alarms or reminders for every little thing I think I might forget. On this particular day, I had a meeting scheduled with some people to speak about a potential investment for something I was working on. I was running on two hours of sleep that day and when I got home, I fell asleep all of a sudden only to wake up and find out it was about two hours past the scheduled time for the meeting. I checked my phone to see so many missed calls.

Thankfully, I had other people I was working on this project with cover up for me at the meeting and things went smoothly. I knew that was very unprofessional but honestly , you can’t cheat nature. Since then, I’ve always made sure to rest well in order to be able to always show up and show up at my best.

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all images belong to me.

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