Selective Memory

I was struck today by the way my memory operates.

I spend hours of each workday engaged in intense conversations on fairly serious topics, and I devote a tremendous amount of mental energy to listening intently to these interactions and processing the subtle nuances as well as the overall impression they leave me with. Lately my days have also been interspersed with snippets of conversation of an entirely different nature: playful, lighthearted, and frankly, entirely frivolous. At the end of the day if you ask me to recount how my serious conversations went, I find my mind is at best blurry, if not outright blank in this regard. All of that focus apparently leaves little lasting imprint. I can, however, at the end of the day, and sometimes even several days later, recount the silliness I have engaged in with uncanny detail.

I don't really have any profound insight into why this is, although I will admit that it worries me a little. I do find it interesting, and I wonder what it all means. If I knew, would I even remember?