The great physicist, Albert Einstein, is credited with having said: “Never memorize something that you can look up.” Today, with all manner of information at our fingertips, it is unclear whether there is anything worth memorizing at all—everything, it seems, can be “looked up.”
And so, it would be natural if you were to wonder why you are ever required to memorize—math facts, chemical bonds, historical dates, lines of poetry. Why bother when there’s Google?
This week, I’ll share with you a few of the reasons why memorization still matters; why Einstein was, in fact, wrong.
We begin with Alexandre Solzhenitsyn, who said, “Own only what you can always carry with you: know languages, know countries, know people. Let your memory be your travel bag.” You may recall that Solzhenitsyn spent years in the Soviet gulag prison system. For years, he possessed only what he could keep in his mind.
Similarly, Russel Morse, a missionary imprisoned in China, reportedly retained his sanity during solitary confinement by reciting passages of the New Testament that he had memorized.
Most of us will never see prison. But we never know when we may be forced to make our memory our travel bag. And if we don’t pack now, it may be empty when we need it most.
Have a wonderful day.
