The things we remember, and the things we wish we could forget
What are the moments, experiences, and seasons that have shaped you as a person?
How many of them do you think you can recall?
How many of them do you wish you couldn’t recall?
I’ve been steeping in some curiosity over these questions the last couple of weeks… While working on the citations for my manuscript, I decided I wanted to include a statement acknowledging that I have been shaped by more people and experiences than I’d ever be able to remember or name. A favorite quote came in handy to reference, and in case it’s the same for you, yes I know these words because Paris quoted them on Gilmore Girls… It reads:
"I cannot remember the books I've read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson
As those words have been simmering inside me after I typed them out a couple of weeks ago, I’ve been increasingly struck by the contrast between just how many things have shaped us that we’ll never remember the details of, and just how many things have shaped us that we can never forget the details of, even if we’d like to.
And rather than getting into the neuroscience of why that is, I’d like to just sit with some curiosity around what’s been stirring with this for a few minutes, and invite you to join me as I do…
Moving to Scotland three months ago created a defining book chapter in the narrative of my life, and with that, has come a lot of reflection of the previous chapters, and how they relate to the now. More and more, I’m incredibly grateful that the me who is starting this PhD program and the me who is completing my first manuscript for publication is the me I am today, the me that I wouldn’t be without having lived through the chapters of life that came before now.
Without those chapters and the formation that happened in them, I can only imagine the crippling anxiety I would be carrying with me into school each day. Without those chapters I cringe thinking about how much colder and more technical my writing would have been in my book. Without those chapters, I grieve even the hypothetical possibility of living in the rushed and reactive rhythms that used to dictate the muscle memory of my everyday.
And also.
Within those chapters, came heartache, disappointment, trauma, grief, and loss beyond what I would ever wish on any other person. Within those chapters I tasted depths of pain that I naively thought my life wouldn’t include. Within those chapters, I was faced with my foundations being shaken in a way that would make it difficult to wonder if I could ever feel fully secure and anchored on the other side.
These things were not like meals that I’ve eaten and cannot remember. These were like bouts of food poisoning that I desperately wish I could forget the specifics of, but instead, will always remember in detail at the faintest hint of them.
What I would give for the aches and pains of growth in those seasons to become distant memories of a regular old dinner that fades away into, “I can’t remember.”
What I would give to enjoy the blissful beauty of this season without recalling the ashes it sprouted up from.
What I would give for my body not to carry the history of it all.
And also.
I know that the sweetness of this chapter could not have been written without the development of what came before.
I know that the sweetness of this chapter would not be, well, sweet, without the bitterness that came before.
And I know that we can’t feel the full weight of pleasant/comfortable emotions without also feeling the full weight of unpleasant/uncomfortable ones.
And still.
Parts of me think, how nice would it be not to remember the painful depths that have made us who we are, to blissfully go on with life, forgetting them like we forget a random meal.
