The greater gift to humankind is the ability to remember. But, the greatest gift to humankind is the ability forget.
We live our life surrounded by memories. Good ones, bad ones, and some really ugly ones.
There is something about the melancholy nature in us that often denies us the forgetting of bad memories. We somehow become slave to them. They keep popping up at the most inopportune times, moving us from a state of low-spirits to dejection.
At that precise moment however, the good memories that will alleviate the feeling of despair, never seem to surface. They remain submerged, blurred, like under the uniform blue of a deep ocean.
Maybe it is a lesson for us in life, we have to be able to string together the good ones, on a very short string too, and keep them on the top of the stack. Keep them accesible. Because the more bad and ugly things that you remember about someone or something or someplace, the more concrete your perception about it. In recent time I have found it amusing, how we use the negative memories as evidence in our arguments that are against. They are almost like facts. Memories aren’t algebraic in that, a good memory does not cancel a bad one. Even if you assume that you have equal number of good and bad memories, the bad ones seem to float better.
Pain, caused by a bad memory, possibly leaves a deeper and pronounced scar that is difficult to ignore. Perhaps it is about letting go, perhaps it is about forgiving. I do not know. But I know this: it is definitely about forgetting – the bad ones.
The greater gift to humankind is the ability to remember. But, the greatest gift to humankind is the ability forget.
We need to remember to forget, to live a better life.
12 thoughts on “Remember to Forget – II”
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Gaizabonts 
I think I agree, the ability to forget is indeed a gift. If forgetting helps us move on, I will take the progress any day over the alternative.
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Yes, it is indeed a useful gift, one that we often choose to open at the wrong times, unfortunately!
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as much as we don’t forget the bad memories, we mostly forget to be grateful for the good ones, and their possible causes. nice post
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Well, said, d-bum! Very perceptive and precise!
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“Memories aren’t algebraic in that, a good memory does not cancel a bad one.” Well said.
And am sure there’s much more to it than the melancholy nature in us that doesn’t let us forget these events. What exactly, i cannot figure out.
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Something to do with survival instinct? I don’t know either. 🙂
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I read this post when you published it, on Nov 7th. I still can’t seem to be able to forget it.
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Thanks, Mahendra. I hope for all good reasons. 🙂
Sent from my iPhone
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Painful as it may be, bad memories do teach us, rather remind us, to keep one foot on the ground lest we get carried so far away with the good things in life that when we do fall, we fall hard. One way to keep us in check. Perhaps, the only one.
Maybe, we indulge in the bad memories because it seems that their ‘badness’ makes them real and by having them in mind, we feel we are living in the real world.
Besides, it’s far easier to get things wrong. But it does take a lot of things to be right to get something else right. Those bad memories, in essence, should steer you towards the right. That’s when you’ve let them serve their purpose.
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Bad memories do teach us, yes, but to hold on to them as a validation of sorts is stretching it a bit too far, methinks. They are good markers for setting you in the right direction, but if you use them as a cudgel for every future mistake (or such), I think, that’s losing the perspective – completely!
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so true.. we forget, temporarily, so that we may live with little less guilt
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We do, don’t we? 🙂
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