For a long time, I believed the biggest risk to my memories was loss - that they would somehow disappear.
This felt like a reasonable concern. Technology breaks, phones get lost, and there is always someone in your life who has a story that begins with, “I had everything on that hard drive.”
So I did what everyone does. I saved everything, I backed things up, and I trusted that as long as my memories existed somewhere, they were safe. And technically, they are.
Nothing is missing. It is just that there is more than we know what to do with, which has now become the problem.
The greatest threat to our memories is no longer losing them. It’s keeping so much that nothing stands out anymore.
It’s a little like trying to have a meaningful conversation at a party where everyone has had just enough wine to believe they are the most interesting person in the room.
At first, it feels lively. There is energy and a sense that something worth hearing is happening, so you lean in, thinking you will catch what matters. But the longer you stand there, the harder it becomes to focus on any one voice, and before long the clarity disappears altogether, leaving you surrounded by noise that never quite resolves into anything you can hold onto.
Eventually, you stop trying to listen at all.
We have documented everything and kept it all. The result of this behavior is not what we expected. We assumed we would remember more, but when everything is competing for your attention, nothing stands out enough to hold on to.
When everything is competing for your attention, nothing stands out enough to hold on to.
There is a reason for this.
In Why We Remember, neuroscientist Charan Ranganath explains that memory works by cutting through the noise, holding onto what matters while allowing the rest to fall away.
In other words, forgetting is part of the system, which is a slightly unsettling idea when you consider how hard we have worked to keep everything.
The system we built to handle our digital lives is working exactly as designed, but it was never designed for the way we, as humans, actually remember.
We remember through meaning and emotion, through the act of deciding what matters and forgetting the rest. Without that, the noise takes over until we find ourselves back at that party, where everything starts to sound the same, and none of the stories stick.
Those decisions, whether we realize it or not, are a form of curation, a quiet process of choosing what matters from the mess and giving it enough weight to return to later.
When that happens, a real conversation emerges, and you hear the story in a way that actually stays with you.
About Nichole
Nichole Healy is the Founder and CEO of Mae, a company building the infrastructure for how families curate, experience, and pass down their digital lives.