STRUGGLE TO REMEMBER, ACHING TO FORGET
Tuesday, April 6, 2021 - daily column #6720
Tricking our brains into doing the opposite of what it is thinking is very hard.
My non-conscious works overtime, 24/7 available for torment – disciplining, not letting go of something until it’s done with me, or until I’m done with it.
Something obscure or faded – crazy-makin’ struggle to recollect stored factoids, but my brain browser comes up empty. Wore, trying to forget something I wish had disappeared or got lost, or some consequential event I wish had never happened.
Our best wishes are ones that can never come true – because getting what we wish for would be too simple, too easy, and without value, if it was handed to us or fell in our lap.
These wishes never granted are neither a manifesto to bring to fruition, nor are they foolishness – which is an easy thing to learn when we are children. Thereafter, separation of unfulfilled potential and idiocy becomes a murky slurry of stupefied laughter.
Memory loss, whatever the cause, erases something we thought was worth remembering – a person, a place, an experience …
Not having memories, that’s another form of sadness.
Having memories we wish we didn’t have, is not regret; it is learning. Just as a burn scar reminds us not to touch hot things, just as a cut scar reminds us knives and sharp edges cut, experience teaches us steps – in pains and gains. Those wear marks and scars are inside us on purpose – we are the only ones who know they exist. That is both our joy and our punishment.
Reader feedback:
Notwithstanding the snow blowing outside my window, golf is coming, RH, Calgary, AB
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