Today is May 21, and on this day in history… it is National Memo Day – a celebration of those little scraps of paper that have quietly shaped our daily lives for generations.
The humble memo. Yellow sticky notes on computer monitors, hastily scrawled reminders on refrigerator doors, digital notifications blinking for attention. These fragments of thought, suspended between minds.
When you think about it, these little notes represent something profound about us as a species. We’re the only creatures who externalize our memories this way, creating a physical extension of our consciousness. That grocery list stuck to your fridge? It’s your thoughts made tangible, waiting patiently until you’re ready to retrieve them.
Before smartphones, before computers, before even paper was commonplace, we were leaving messages for each other and for ourselves. Scratches on cave walls, knots in rope, notches in wood. The memo is ancient technology, really.
The word itself comes from “memorandum” – things that must be remembered. As if memory alone wasn’t trustworthy enough for the important stuff. And maybe it isn’t. Our minds are porous, letting moments slip through like water through fingers. The memo stands guard against forgetting.
In corporate America, memos became power. “Did you get the memo?” became shorthand for being in the loop, being someone who matters enough to be informed. The memo transformed from reminder to gatekeeper of institutional knowledge.
Strange to think that something so mundane connects us across time with the ancient Romans who wrote memorandum on wax tablets, with Leonardo da Vinci whose notebooks were filled with memos to himself, with your grandparents who kept a notepad by the phone.
These scraps of paper and digital alerts – they’re the breadcrumbs we drop to find our way back to intentions we once had. Little anchors tethering us to promises made to ourselves and others.
So maybe today, when you jot down a quick note or tap out a reminder on your phone, pause for just a second. That simple act links you to an unbroken human chain stretching back millennia – all of us trying to hold onto thoughts that might otherwise drift away like morning fog.
The memo: humanity’s oldest battle against forgetting, our oldest confession that we need help remembering what matters.
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