It is essential to forget

I was frantically searching my misplaced bank passbook. Of late this is a recurring phenomenon with several other day today items, both trivial and important. My family always attribute it to my advancing age. It was always very uncomfortable to be reminded that one’s memory is weakening due to aging, fearing the situation in the years to come.

I pondered over the issue again and again and started convincing myself that after all human brain also is like any electronic gadget using memory chip which requires intermittent deleting and flushing of accumulated junk and spams, to reclaim the valuable storage space. Unfortunately, we humans are not bestowed with such a clearing mechanism in the form of an app which we can activate, at our sweet will, to purge out the accumulated unwanted overcrowded memory. I resorted to meditation, relaxation techniques, laughing clubs and so on with the intention to still my mind thereby enabling the memory to revitalise itself. As my forgetfulness triumphed over my various unsuccessful attempts, mocking at the attempts of beating the nature, I was more and more uncomfortable searching for another misplaced object of importance. It is at this juncture that I came across two valuable advices of the great ancient philosopher, Plato. First of the advises is “forget whatever good you have done to others” and the second gem is “forget what harm others have done to you”. When we forget the good, we have done to others, it will relieve us of the expectation of return favour or disappointment when they don’t reciprocate manifesting ill-will towards them, driving us to ponder the issue over and over again cramping our memory.  Similarly, when you forget the harm and insult others have caused to you, we will be shedding the huge unwanted baggage of anger, revenge and ill will which would have been crowding our memory eternally. 

Definitely Philosopher Plato’s advices are easier said than done. But, imagine if we can really inculcate to “forget” as advised by Plato, we will definitely be de-clogging our memory, facilitating ample memory capacity probably doing away the need for searching the passbooks again.