Remember to remember

Prem Patel

“Understanding is greater than memory,” an adage I have heard a million times in medical school, as if the two were opponents in some zero-sum game. But the more you look at how we actually do things—solve problems, show up for one another, practice the lives we claim to value—the more obvious the counterpoint becomes: memory isn’t the enemy of understanding; it is the gatekeeper of it. Without memory, understanding is insight that cannot be called upon.

Take calculus as an example. Math feels like pure understanding, like a lens that suddenly clarifies the world so completely it must be unforgettable. But understanding is forgettable. The “I get it, so I’ll always remember it” myth breaks the first time the chain rule or the structure of integration by parts won’t surface. Without memory, your intuition sits like light behind frosted glass: the mind nods, the hand can’t move. 

In medical school, the flashcard app called Anki is often undermined for being cheap rote memorization. To me, Anki was not about worshipping trivia; it was a rehearsal schedule that keeps the right facts and procedures near the surface. Spaced repetition lowers the activation energy and shaves the friction you’ll face when the problem shows up again. Not to turn you into a walking encyclopedia, but so the crucial facts constantly remain close to the surface.

And the argument isn’t limited to academics. Gratitude and love are often framed as feelings, but they function in daily life as practices. Practices have steps. Steps are easier when remembered. You can intend to be a grateful person and still go weeks without saying “thank you” in a way that lands. Not because you’re insincere, but because intention is a weak counterweight to forgetting. We forget to notice. We forget to speak. We forget the habits that would make the feeling visible.

Even virtues have forgetting curves. Gratitude withers when not recalled; love goes quiet when not queued. The most generous people aren’t necessarily the ones who feel the warmest feelings; they’re the ones who remember to act on them. They remember to ask a second question, to send the text, to put a hand on a shoulder, to catch small moments before they evaporate. This is memory doing moral work: keeping a value close enough to be executable.

Call this the ethics of retrieval. If you believe something matters, make it easy to remember at the right time. That can be as simple as cues—placing a note where your future attention will naturally land—or as structured as a spaced-repetition deck for the person you want to be: names you don’t want to lose, the three questions you ask patients to feel heard, the two sentences that deescalate a brewing argument, the weekly reminder to call your grandmother while you can. It sounds mechanical until you notice how often our highest ideals are eroded not by malice but by drift.

There’s a popular suspicion that to externalize memory is to cheapen meaning. As if reminders degrade sincerity. But rituals and tools don’t make care counterfeit; they make it reliable. We already accept this in other domains. Pilots use checklists not because they don’t “understand” flight, but because memory under pressure is leaky. Surgeons mark the site not because they doubt their intentions, but because intention is no defense against omission. In the same spirit, a calendar alert to write a thank-you note doesn’t cheapen gratitude. It rescues it from the forgetfulness that would otherwise swallow it whole.

Use Anki. Write the prompt that saves a habit from entropy. Treat “I understand it but can’t remember it” as a design problem, not a personality flaw. Arrange your environment so that the next right move is already halfway in your hand. Make memory an ally instead of an alibi.

In the end, we become what we repeatedly retrieve. Not just the theorems and protocols, but also the gestures and phrases that carry love into the room. To live well is to remember well. You don’t need a perfect mind. In a world where our attention is infinitely divided, you need the practices to remember what matters most. After all, what you remember to act on, again and again, is who you become and how you impact the world around you.

Prem Patel is a third-year medical student at UMass Chan Medical School and is interested in the intersection between culture, medicine, and meaning.