A couple months ago, I read a survey on medical students’ top wishes for Christmas. Top wish: photographic memory.

As a high school student, I can remotely understand the depth and intensity of such a desire. The hours spent memorizing historical trivialities which I will probably have forgotten completely in a few years more, the midnight air burning away my life before a biology exam, and the number of times I re-read the same sentence over and over again suggests something absurd. I am not talking about redoing math problems, which can serve as good practice of basic skills, nor am I referring to the second, more critical reading of an enjoyable piece of literature to glean insight on a deeper meaning earlier missed. What I am talking about are those facts so useless and bland one might as well be memorizing telephone numbers. 613-894-0922. 613-894-0922. 613-894-0922. 613-894-0922. 613-894-0922. 613-894-0922. Read these digits ten times and you’ll have learned nothing new, a hundred times and you’ll feel bored, a thousand times and you’ll feel stupid for doing so, a million times and it’ll drive you mad, a billion times and you’ll have become senselessly insane.

Imagine if you could remember everything that you’ve ever encountered! You would only have to read the textbook once, to have collected every single word and picture in a mental encyclopaedia that you can quickly reference at any time for the rest of your life. You would remember every single person’s name – albeit, a bit creepy – every conversation, every single detail of every event and your happiest memories in the most lucid images. You would be a human encyclopaedia, a scholarly expert in any field, and a welcome socialite at any party.

Stop. Before you make your wish to the genie, be careful that your dream can become reality. There lies something darker behind any such ideal, and this is one of them.

“To be, or not to be?” Wouldn’t it be wonderful to be dead? To fall into a peaceful, eternal slumber and have nothing to worry about, ever again, is a desire considered by many and attempted by few. “To sleep, to dream – ay! There’s the rub.” Who knows what happens after one commits suicide, where we end up – Heaven, Hell, or Purgatory. We fear the unknown.

How delightful it must be to have a perfect, photographic memory!... Actually, not that great, not necessarily…

Sometimes, we want to forget. We want to forget the embarrassing or regretful moments. Pain, misery, fear, disgust, guilt, anger, jealousy, melancholy, and betrayal. Maybe masochists enjoy these disturbing things. But the rest of us, the sane people, would rather not think about them. What’s done, cannot be undone. What’s happened cannot unhappen. Why waste time dwelling on negative, useless, harmful thoughts that don’t even matter anymore? Photographic eidetikers – beware! These shadows of the past will haunt you for life.

Beyond forgetting as a psychologically healthy defense mechanism, there is a more practical purpose for forgetting. A brilliant detective once said to me, “Why would it bother whether the Sun revolves around the Earth, or vice-versa? The reason why I am able to solve these complex cases is because I have cleared my mind of the everyday distractions. I have organized my evidence and cleaned out the attic of my thoughts. Walk inside, and you will see a pile of labelled boxes at the end with useful tools – skills – relevant to my work and the two rows of neatly organized bookshelves lined up on the sides of the room. The center walking area is empty. I throw out everything non-essential. This way, I can find what is useful to me in a matter of seconds.” While the detective can efficiently search through his compendium of knowledge for necessary and relevant information, someone with too much junk can get lost in the clutter. In fact, a study I saw on the news recently reported scientific evidence that slower learning with older age is directly linked to having an excess of neural connections, i.e. memories.

Is photographic memory good or bad? I really can’t say for sure, although it probably depends on one’s profession – doctor or detective.