Move to a one-room apartment, I guess. I don’t know. Maybe just knowing the cause for our memory loss helps us prepare for it – from now on, every time we pass through a doorway, we should take a moment to concentrate on what we need to remember for the next room. Unless we forget.
Is it possible that kissing the mezuzah helps us remember things? I don’t know. Maybe it’s just designed to help us remember that Hashem is watching. There’s no scroll in there that says, “You came in for a mop.” You need visual cues for something like that, and you left those in the other room.
Maybe walking back into the original room will help you remember things. Or will that basically be like going through another doorway and just make things worse? Isn’t that like saying that if a bump on your head made you forget things, bumping it again will make you remember, and not just give you a concussion? You’re not an old-time appliance.
I think what you really need is an anchor. You need to leave someone in the original room to stand there and wait for you to come back and eventually yell, while you’re just standing around in the second room, “What’s taking so long in there? Just get the light bulb!” And you go, “Oh! Light bulb!” This is the same method we use to remember to hurry up in the bathroom.
Dear Mordechai,
I work full time, but I’d like to add a learning seder to my day. When should I do it?
Trying
Dear Trying,
You might want to get a chavrusa – generally another working guy – so that you can take turns standing each other up. That way, someone always shows up to learn while the other guy is working. It’s called the Yissachar-Zevulun partnership.
Ideally, you’ll try to learn either immediately before or after a minyan (and not Mincha), when you’re both in shul anyway.
You could do it before minyan, but you may not even get there in time for davening. There’s no way you’re going to get there early for a seder, at least reliably. And then when davening starts, you’re not going to know what to do with yourself. “Wow, do people still say Karbanos?” You’re going to be like, “Do we have to stop for davening yet? Because I can learn until Barchu.”
So maybe you should learn after davening right? That way you’re both already there. The only thing about learning after davening is that someone will announce, at some point, that the last person to leave should turn off the lights, which suddenly causes a mad rush to get out of there. I don’t want to be the one to close the lights, and figure out what switch does what. And the switches seem to change what they do every day. There’s one switch that does nothing, and another that flips up to turn the lights off. I can’t even find all the switches. Why aren’t they anywhere in this room? Am I supposed to turn off the circuit breaker? There’s no one here to ask. And then I have to make it back across the shul in the dark to collect my stuff and get out.
This is why rabbis recommend you get a chavrusa. He’ll be your anchor, in case you leave the room and forget that you’re looking for light switches. He can also stand in the room and tell you when the lights are off.
So I guess your best bet is to just learn during davening. Preferably in a shul that has more than one minyan.