When do we reach our intellectual peak? When our thoughts and reasoning seem to travel in the speed of light, and we absorb everything we experience with such lightness - at the age of fifteen perhaps?

Or later? Twenty-one? No matter which age, there comes a time when we start noticing the decline. It is inevitable, like all the phases of life. Of course we get less agile physically - if we now ever were that in the first place - and lose a lot of our physical strength and capacities. We may even lose some limbs or organs, our sight, the sense of smell, etc.

But what we really don’t count on losing is our intellectual capacities. Even if we do know that it too is completely within the realm of possibilities - and even probabilities, A part of human life.

There are many movies that depict this intellectual decline so well. But perhaps none as well as The Father, starring Anthony Hopkins. When our own mind messes with us till there is no way to know what is real. And the only thing left to do is to live in the moment.

You might want to include that in your bucket list of films!

But long before we reach old age, we may start forgetting things. At the same time we know that it is not that terribly important to remember everything. Who remembers everything?! We stuff our brains with so much data - a lot of it pretty trifle matters - that it is inevitable that some of it will be flushed down the drain of mind. Then there are the somewhat more important things, like remembering people’s names. Or remembering what you did last week. Or yesterday.

At some point though you may notice that you keep on forgetting too much. Leading to difficult or embarrassing situations. One way to circumvent these challenging situations is to ask questions. Or simply talk about something else. But we can only do that so far - until the fact that we truly are functioning in a lower level as far as communication and/or thought processes go, may overwhelm us. And realize that there might not be any turning back to a resemblance of our “true” self.

We - and our nearest and dearest - can then only resort to something that we should actually do all our lives. That is, to be merciful toward ourselves and others. And remember that there is always more than meets the eye.