In Praise of Forgetting

what matters in an age of digital excess (archival post from 2018)

Dear Friend,

Timehop greets me every morning with “you have memories to look back on today.”

1 year ago: my daughter in a pink snowsuit getting up from her first snow angel
4 years ago: my niece learning how to crawl in Texas while I watch over Skype
5 years ago: I'd cleaned the house (my tiny 700 foot apartment in San Diego - not exactly a strenuous task)
7 years ago: I quoted the beginning song from Big Bang Theory to let people know I was watching it (remember when people used to do this?)
10 years ago: I had found the dress I wanted to be married in and my smile is real, though reserved, as though I'm not quite ready to believe my good fortune 

It's like seeing the cross-section of an archeological dig, all the ages of my life suddenly revealed in strict order. But chronology is only one way to measure a life. Timehop feels strange because the significant becomes all mixed up with the mundane.

Our brains are designed to forget, to compress information, to extract the significant, to remember the highs and lows, but not much in-between.

What do we lose in our forgetting that the digital world brings back? Some would argue a more accurate "slice of life," that more data only improves the final analysis. But my gut tells me that more isn't always better. That mitigating the effects of digital excess will be the biggest problem of future psychologists. That there is grace to be found in forgetting. 

This week I polished my great-grandmother's silver serving tray and put it back in its brown felt case, but not before glimpsing my reflection: it had a strange color cast and the outline of my face was wavy, totally unlike a mirror or a photo.

I like this idea of an imperfect reflection, an incomplete record. I like the idea of celebrating that we often "see through a glass, darkly."

Even when our past can be laid out before us with terrible accuracy, we cannot grasp the future. What do you hold in your hands this moment? What do you hold in your heart? 

May we let go of the rest as gracefully as possible. This week I wish you forgetfulness. I wish you the murky reflections of a lake on a cloudy day. I wish you the beauty of the incomplete.

xo,

Laura