Why Would You Want to “Memorize”?
Memorizing can be a challenge for some people. However, memorizing is something that you must do in order to learn. You can use such techniques as Mnemonics to help you memorize facts, recall things, and remember events.
There are some people who find remembering things or memorizing to be quite easy. For others, the skill of memorizing is not easy and takes a lot of hard work. Spelling is a simple example where memorizing comes into play whether you are learning a language or just writing and speaking.
Take English for example. The word memorize is spelled with a z but the word sunrise is spelled with an s yet both make the same sound. Confusing isn’t it. Comb is pronounced ohm yet tomb is pronounced oom, even more confusing.
To learn a language, the English language a person must memorize the spelling of words and also the pronunciation of those words. The same is true of other languages. For people who find memorizing to be easy, the spelling and pronunciation of the words is not difficult. For those who struggle to memorize, they must use tools like flashcards, visual cues to help the memory, and lots of repetition.
It is said Albert Einstein, one of the smartest men the world has ever seen could not remember his own phone number. The story goes when asked about this, Einstein responded with a quip of why should I memorize a number I never call when I can just look it up in the phone book if I need to call it!
The logic of Einstein was to save his focus on memorizing for what he deemed to be important things and it is hard to argue with the power of his brain. For the rest of us, what do you need to memorize in your life? Is your memory full of useful facts and trivia? Does your job require you to have a good memory?
The chances are you have a great deal more memorized that you think you do. Addresses, phone numbers, people’s names, email addresses, directions to and from different places, your mind is amazing.
Internet search engines are amazing in that you type in what you are looking for and it goes out onto the huge internet and returns things that are the same or similar to what you typed into the search criteria. Even if you typed the wrong thing the search engine will look for the right thing and may even give you the correct spelling and ask you if that was what you meant to type.
While perhaps more complex, your brain operates like the search engine. You may not know how to spell aluminum, but the chances are if you speak English you would be able to say a soda pop can was made from aluminum.
Have you even tried to think of an actor or movie title and just had to let your brain think for awhile and then it “came to you”. Your search engine between your ears was working hard until it found the answer.
Memorizing is easy for some, more difficult for others, but we all memorize many things in our lives without even knowing it.
