Forgetting Something?

“You don’t remember anything?”

“Nope, not a thing.”

“Doesn’t that bother you? I know it would bother me.”

I don’t really know when it began, because it isn’t like you get hit in the head, end up in the hospital and don’t know who you are or where you are. It is slower than that. It’s more like you can’t find your glasses. You know how someone always points to your head cause that’s where they are supposed to be. But you don’t wear glasses and you can’t find them cause you don’t remember you don’t wear glasses.

It’s not like Alzheimer either. Alzheimer is a degenerative process. Your brain doesn’t shed your memories like you were a dog shedding his fir, or like when you get older and you lose your hair. No, it’s nothing like that. Those are natural things, even though they aren’t necessarily what you long for. 

“So, what happened that you can’t remember. You weren’t hit in the head, you don’t have Alzheimer’s, and you don’t wear glasses. Must be something like alien abduction, probes, that kind of thing. No?”

It is strange, well maybe not strange.  We all look for logical answers to illogical questions. It’s kind of the way we prove we are human. But not remembering is something I always wanted to do. Think about it. There are so many things that we’d like to forget, and of course so many we’d like to remember. But when all is said and done, it all slips away. We distort memories to make them fit our made-up expectations. We lie to ourselves to prove a point. I choose not to remember, therefore I don't remember. 

We need to believe our lives are good. We have not wasted an existence on the mundane activities we spend thousands of dollars on, just to forget. Toys, boats, cars, houses, some we can afford, most we can’t, if we were to consider what the real cost is. Not the price tag, but what we traded to pay for the car that ends up in ten years in some junk yard they need to put a fence around, so we don’t remember as we drive by. They tell us, it’s so we don’t have to look at something that reminds us of what we’ve sacrificed, family, fun, but actually it’s so we don’t have to pretend we had nothing to do with helping destroy it.

See, that’s what I mean. Giving ourselves the freedom to analyze our lives, and we begin to wish we’d been born a chipmunk. I’m pretty sure chipmunks didn’t cause climate change or start wars all over the globe so we can be sure we have enough of whatever we need for our electronic gizmos. 

I know that it’s not fair. We do some good things in spite of ourselves. But think about it. If we were to put all our good memories and or feelings on a scale, or lets say a teeter totter just to lighten things up a bit. Then put all the things that make us feel we failed as human beings on the other end, and what do you think we’d end up with. 

I believe we’d end up with us, and our good memories up in the air, our two-hundred-dollar athletic shoes dangling in the breeze. That may sound defeatist to you, but I don’t see anyway to reverse the trend. We are at the tipping point of what? I don’t know. But I do know that once you start down the other side of Success Mountain, there ain’t no way of stopping. You keep picking up speed until one day the ocean is lapping at your feet and all there is left to eat is a pickle someone left in the fridge that has been unplugged for the past month, cause there is no power. Keeping an appliance plugged in when there is no power may be electrifying, but stupid.

So you see why I’ve had to consider all my options. It isn’t just because people are leaving, people I care about, or that our planet is fighting back, and disease is getting better at adapting to our attempts to eradicate it, than we are at adapting too, or eradicating it. And all these things are happening because we continue to believe we are the supreme beings, and all other animals and plant life, are subservient to us. It implies that, in what we call the, “Good Book.” Which, when you find a copy, if you don’t have one of your own, you will see it is filled with people and cities, pretty much everything on earth being destroyed because we failed to appreciate truth and justice.

“So, what you are telling me is that you have decided to not remember. It isn’t that you can’t, you just won’t. Have you begun to doubt your decision. I mean, there must be things you’d like to remember but won’t allow yourself to. Is there some kind of withdrawal from no longer remembering? It is after all like having to learn everything you’ve ever known, all over again. I can’t imagine having to go through that again.”

And you would be right, and you would also be wrong. The question should not be if we can do something, but why. Would you agree, that because we can do something, doesn’t necessarily mean we should. The concept of can, which means we are capable of doing something, versus, we may do something, which implies we have given the problem some consideration, and have chosen after weighing the outcome of that decision, that we will, or will not, complete a project. If we have decided that the detrimental effects of finding a solution and completing the task, has more benefit potential than risk, we may decide to accept the solution to the problem as beneficial. That is, assuming we can determine all of the negative aspects of our decision, which I would contend is impossible in that it may take generations for the results to be fully understood. By then it may be too late if the negative aspects have outweighed the positive ones, and left us once again watching our decision cause more harm than good. 

So, in answer to your question, I believe only you, can make that decision. It seems to me, after having examined the process in an effort to not only find a positive solution, but that once found, the negatives won’t mutate, allowing the solution to leave us with a bigger mess than we began with.

Therefore, I have concluded, and hopefully explained to you why there is too much effort and susceptibility to failure, to want or need to remember. It may prove to be too dangerous to myself, others, and the environment on which we depend. So you see, we may by remembering, chose to remember, or we can simply stop remembering, and spend our free time not destroying everything we touch, but actually allowing animals and plants, to do what they do best, live.