Forgetting

We are bombarded with so much information everyday, so it is only natural that we forget.If we remembered everything that we experienced then we would be unable to function in our daily lives. Imagine remembering and reliving every tiny bit of your life all the time, every fearful, sad, happy event. Your mind would be overloaded with information and it can make you an extremely inefficient person. It would be analogous to a computer that spends its CPU power processing redudant background tasks instead of focusing on the immediate task at hand.
There are extremely rare individuals who suffer from the disorder of 'hyperthymesia' or the extraordinary ability to recall events that they have personally experienced. Such a person can be asked any date and to describe the events that occurred that day, what the weather was like, and many trivial details that most people would not be able to recall. Only 4 or 5 such cases have been described in literature.
Generally such people spend an abnormal amount of time thinking about their past and are about to recall specific events from their past with extraordinary clarity.
By the way, the word 'thymesia' comes from the greek thymesis for memory.
More on how we normals remember and forget next time!