Forgetfullness.

It is sometimes strange to say that the brain is not a machine.

I don't mind giving the source of the image, it looks pretty.

"It's okay to forget some things. You're not machines." says an analysis professor from what I see on Math Professor Quotes. But, to be exact, your brain does not really throw things away from it - it somehow writes everything into it and it's like an ever-expanding hard disk drive that stores every single thing you ever meet throughout your life. If anime doesn't tell lies all the time, then the brain actually has sufficient storage to perfectly remember 140 years of things, probably even more because it handles things extremely efficiently. What it does most of the times is just put things on priority, or throw it far behind for you to find it when you finally need it about 20 years later. Or, that is how it feels to me.

Just a slight warning, the link above has some spoiler to some very old anime.

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I am forgetful, like insanely forgetful, at least it is when you compare me to my peers. Things slip off the mind like instantly - I can happily leave the key at the door and walk away without knowing that I did so. I also have infamous records of leaving my laptop charger in class, leaving thumbdrives at the library, or remembering a quiz timetable wrongly. Sometimes it happens so frequently till the extent I ask myself if I accidentally ate my brain last night.

Apparently, I didn't. But it makes no difference too if I did.

But, it is a little interesting if you think it the other way round - I remembered a video from Cryaotic, reading a story from the r/nosleep subreddit (yes, the horrible subreddit I mentioned a few posts back). You may safely click into this link as it is completely safe from anything that might be not safe for life (gore, blood, pain, torture, or something like that, but I am not responsible if you clicked into his other videos). The story is basically a guy talking about the autopilot mechanism in the brain - something that happens when your brain treats a routine as confirmed and always assumes that it is done - and how it ended up with a tragedy. To keep it short, the concept is that sometimes life gets so stagnant and your brain decides to treat things as granted. You will then "forget" things here and there because of how you treated them as "done" although you broke the routine. If I am going to apply this to one of my cases above, it will be leaving the laptop charger in class because it's normally not in my routine. I would just keep my notebook, pick up my phone, water bottle, and the bag. I won't really remember to check the drawer because it is not usually done, and it is always assumed that the drawer is empty and nothing is left behind.

In experience, the "assuming" part automatically starts when the brain does not feel the need to put in effort to do the current job. Like walking out of the classroom - heck, who cares if you left anything behind, you have two games to catch. That becomes worse when you are sick or have more important stuff on your mind - it will automatically attempt to save power or put these stuff into the huge pile of not-so-important things that it assumes that you will not be using anytime soon. That's why you are expected to refresh your memory before tests, this put them back in front so that you can find them easily.

Surprisingly, this is a little similar to what your computer does. Your computer has a queue of tasks to execute from time to time, and it executes following the it, assuming that things are done correctly unless an interrupt arises. Then, it has a small memory block we call the cache memory. The RAM is too slow for the CPU, so frequently used instructions are dumped into it for faster access. Sounds similar? I won't be surprised if we will be creating a human with a computer brain in the future, we're so alike after all.

Alright, after so long, you might be asking why the hell did I wrote all these. Main reason is, I feel sick these days and of course is tired most of the times. For whatever reason, I managed to leave my dorm key at whatever place I can't remember, and left my earphones at somewhere I really don't know. That's something like a new record, I had not tried having two things go missing at once, especially the things that are always by my side. I guess it's just a matter of time before I lose my phone too.

I guess I should really go and take some rest and hope that stupid things like these won't happen anymore. See you then.

--Lilacse