If you could forget anything about yourself, about your past, about how you think, would you?
I know I would. There are shameful things, fortunately not many, I’d like to forget. But I suspect, the revisions of myself, and my potential actions as a result, might disappear if I don’t always remember why I do certain things, and do not do other things. I suppose, in that situation it’s not a good thing to forget.
But I can remember personal trauma that I think I would very much like to forget. There’s nothing to be learned remembering it. I wasn’t the cause of it. I was in the wrong place at the wrong time, there’s no changing it. Why should I not forget? Why instead is it one of the most vivid memories I possess?
I can posit it’s hard for me to forget that which concerns me most. Trifles like an appointment can be forgotten, but the breaking of my nose is something I will never forget.
Which is another example of personal trauma, rather than the first I was thinking of. Not that the breaking of the nose disproves the “wrong place, wrong time” formula. That time it was a baseball out of nowhere, if you define wandering into the middle of a baseball game while daydreaming, nowhere. I think I was 7. One of my pals took me into the Boys washroom in the basement and ran cold water onto paper towels which he used to sop up blood and apply a compress until the bleeding stopped. I was lying on the cold concrete floor, which felt remarkably comforting. Once the bleeding stopped and I could sit up, my friend said I should probably go to my house. When I arrived home, my Mom asked why I was back so early and I told her my nose was broken.
She replied, “No, it’s not. It’s swollen, that’s all.”
I loved my Ma. How many songs start with that premise? Should I forget her telling me my nose wasn’t broken? That it took me a week (a week!) to get her to take me to our family doctor, who said, when I walked through the door, “When’d you break your nose?” Should I forget the vindication I felt at that moment? Would it change how much I love my Ma if I forgot that?
BTW, our doctor took a look, said, it’s healed well, nothing to do. Give it some more time, wait for the swelling to go down.
Which means, my 8 year old buddy from Cub Scouts did a great job of first aid. I think every child should be taught first aid.
Memory of self is largely what makes us. We need to remember ourselves to be ourselves. We are a living story we tell and retell ourselves and in the retelling, we remake ourselves.
Forgetting is accomplished by revision of memory. As we tell ourselves the story of our self, which is our only story to tell, we retell what happened, focussing on what we liked, what worked well and what didn’t, and what we would like to forget. When we do that, we begin to forget.
Which is why really bad pain memory is hard to forget. You can’t retell that part and change anything. Wrong place, wrong time, sticky memory.