Forgetfulness: Blessing or Curse?

 A trait of human nature is the tendency to forget things.  Let's face it - we have all forgotten something at some point, right?  As we get older and things slow down, forgetfulness becomes more frequent.  It is intensified with unfortunate conditions like Alzheimer's disease and dementia in elderly people, but even a perfectly mentally cognizant older person can have days of forgetfulness too.  What is this forgetfulness, and why do we have it at times? 

This is a multifaceted topic, as for one forgetfulness is a reminder of our own finite existence - we are not immortal in a physical sense, and being forgetful is part of the process of aging.  It is also a consequence of the Fall in Genesis 3 as well, and as such it is connected to concupiscent nature in humanity.  However, this does not make forgetfulness a bad thing, because in some ways it may actually be a safety mechanism God gave us to protect us.  Let me get into that a bit.

Just because something is forgotten does not mean it is necessarily lost forever.  Our memories are always part of us, and we can picture our minds and souls as being like a huge archive.  Some things may be buried, they may be faded a little, but they are there somewhere.  Often, a stimulus can cross our path which for some reason refreshes that old memory, and it is like an epiphany moment for us when we think, "Oh yeah, I remember that now!"  And, let's face it too, some things are better left forgotten, as they could also evoke some painful memories and feelings, so in that aspect it is a mercy we have to forget.  Also, God makes forgetfulness a virtue in some cases as well - even he "forgets" our past sins if we come to him in repentance and receive his grace to do that.  That is a key fact of the Sacrament of Baptism in the Church - it washes away our original sins, and it as is if we never had them.  Likewise, the Sacrament of Confession we should receive as often as we can does the same thing with subsequent sins committed after our baptism.  Grace, therefore, uses our own innate capacity to forget things as a tool.  So, when we are met with the old axiom "Confession is good for the soul," it truly is.  Even if a person is not Catholic, being able to confide in a trusted person about things on one's mind can bring a closure that person desperately needs, and it just helps getting it out there.  While that may seem contradictory to the virtue of forgetfulness, in a lot of ways they go hand-in-hand.  Getting closure and forgetting past disappointments and hurts is restorative, and although the memory is still there somewhere, it is not important anymore once we receive that closure, and therefore it lays forgotten where it should be.  That is virtue of forgetfulness.

Obviously, forgetfulness has its negative side too, like everything else.  For instance, if you forget to turn off the coffee maker when you leave for work of a morning, it can lead to a disaster like a house fire.  Or, if you forget to take vital medication, it can lead to a health emergency.   To counter that, this is why it is important to write everything down - keep journals, write in calendars, and although it can be a bit cluttered, even resort to Post-It notes if it helps. A journal is particularly good, in that often even writing down the bad stuff that occurs in our lives helps us to have closure too, and as I have talked about many times, often in retrospect we find the overall reason God allowed those things to happen to us. So, even negative memories are not necessarily bad, and if you document those too it can be a way of finalizing your freedom from them.  Being the fastidious bureaucrat that I am, I have meticulously kept records of everything over the years.  For the past 30 years I have kept a journal, for instance, and I also have kept tax records going back to my first paid job as well as bank registers, calendars I have had since high school, and other documentation.  While I don't keep every piece of paper that crosses my path - I do a cleanout every year of my files and discard receipts and other stuff I don't need that is over 2 years old, for instance - I do keep the important stuff, those records that can be used to know me after my passing at some point in the next decades.  So, I have put in place a safety net that if I forget something, I can easily reference it through a series of ordered records I have kept up for years.  There are a couple of takeaways now I want to note, and then we will wrap up the discussion for today.

As a normal person going through your routine of everyday life, it is not necessary to recall every minute detail of your life for every moment. If we did that, our brains would probably explode.  That is where documentation comes into play.  For those details we don't use every day and cannot recall at a moment's notice, we have a documented record of it to remind us when it becomes necessary.  With the increased availability of online resources now, it has become even more accessible as a couple of clicks on a computer screen can bring up any piece of information we have collected (provided it has been digitized) and that makes life more manageable.  However, in many cases, forgetfulness is also a good thing - putting things in our memory archive within us means that they can no longer affect our quality of life, especially the negative things.  The memories are still there for sure, but they are just tucked away and we live our lives without needing to recall them.  That again is a mercy that supernatural grace gives us with our own cognitive abilities and limitations.  

That being said, not everything we forget is necessarily a bad thing - sometimes it is for the best.  So, as we continue our pilgrimage of life on this earth, let us learn to document what is important, not worry about what is not, and even with bad memories we often have good retrospection.  Thanks again for allowing me to share with you.