On Forgetting

There are some memories we think we’ll never forget. And that may be true, especially of life’s defining moments. A first kiss. A winning shot. Famously, the first time experiencing ice. They persist with hyper clarity months, years, decades later. How could we ever let them go?

But, there is another kind of memory that we almost never keep. The mundane, the unextraordinary, the habitual. We might remember these moments for a few minutes, sometimes for a few seconds, but rarely more, like locking the front door on the way out for work. We did the lock the front door, right?

For me, one such mundane memory was a memory that I didn’t even realize was a memory. That is, until I forgot. Until one day all of those memories of the thing I had done hundreds, if not thousands, of times in my life seemingly disappeared. I knew I had the memories, I recognized the shape of the space they used to inhabit, but all were un-recollectable, all out of grasp. It was something simple, so incredibly simple. I forgot how to tie my shoes.

Around this time I developed plantar fasciitis, which is foot pain caused by inflammation of the connective tissue running from the heel to the toes. It was caused, I think, by wearing unsupportive shoes, shoes that I, in fact, never untied after the first time I tied them. It was, in retrospect, a problem I created for myself. There’s no real good way to cure plantar fasciitis other than by having the right footwear and giving the feet time to heal. So, one morning I untied my shoes, put them on, and then bent over to tie them as tight as I could. For maximum stability. I took both laces in either hand, looped one around the other, and—well—I couldn’t remember what else to do.

So, I did what anyone in my situation would do. I YouTube’d it, and the memories came flooding back.

But while I’ve simplified the types of memories into two broad camps, those being memories we never want to forget, and the memories we might never truly make, I should mention there is another category I’ve neglected: memories we don’t want to have. And I, like all honest human beings, have those memories, too. Tying my shoes is not one of them. But, forgetting something so basic got me thinking. What if it’s possible to forget things on purpose? If I had tried to forget how to tie my shoes, not tying them might have been a good first step.

So I turned to the internet and found that Googling “how to forget” is probably not the best place to start. However, there was one search result, to a New York Times article that ran earlier in 2021 entitled How to Forget Something that confirmed what I had found in my own life:

”…You can also work on what cognitive scientists call direct suppression. “You just kind of put up the mental hand and say, ‘Nope, I don’t want to think about that…”.”

In the past I’ve described how I combat an intrusive thought entering my mind as “changing the channel.” Meaning that I recognize the thought I don’t want to think, the one that causes all that suffering, and then immediately pick something else to think about. Sometimes this direct suppression, if enacted early enough in the thought cycle, is easy to do. Sometimes it’s not. But it’s the only thing that I’ve ever found that works.

I’ve tried meditation, tried to just observe my thoughts as they run circles around my head, always returning to the breath. It may work for some, but I’ve never been successful in not going down the rabbit hole. Usually, I just feel exhausted afterwards. But with thought suppression, with saying to myself “no, I don’t think I will do that,” I’ve at least been able to stem the tide.

The interesting part about doing this is that sometimes I avoid a memory without even realizing that I’ve done it. I’ve sort of trained myself to see those thoughts coming on, and I shake them off (sometimes physically so). Do I still think the things I don’t want to think? Yes, every day. Do I spend hours ruminating on them? Sometimes, sadly, yes, I give in. But, when it works, there’s no panic, there’s no banging my head against a wall, no fists against my temples.

I think the key is the thing I talked about at the beginning of this post. The return, the coming back to the memories we want to keep. Luckily, I still have some of those. Earlier in that NYT article I referred to there’s a good line:

”…Your brain is always in the process of forgetting, but Anderson believes you can forget with more intentionality — what he calls motivated forgetting — and that you can get better at it with practice. “You sculpt your memories,” he says…”

By reinforcing the good memories, returning to them, instead of the negative, we forget to tie our shoes. We forget to give in to the memories that hurt. And the added bonus is that we begin to remember other things that make us happy, too. One doctor I knew told me: “memories that are wired together fire together.” If we think of something that makes us mad, the pathways in our brain that store those angry memories tend to activate in unison. Pretty soon, we’re fuming over something entirely unrelated to what initially made us angry. The hack, as it were, is that the same thing happens for memories that make us feel good.

It can be something small. That quick witted quip you said in an elevator once that made people chuckle. That time you made the perfect lasagna with a week’s worth of leftovers that you later dreamt of. The first day of summer break. You’d be surprised at what comes back to you.

Change is never easy, and rewiring your thought patterns takes practice. My God, does it take practice. It can seem fruitless at times, truly. But, I promise you, it is possible. I have the proof. If I can forget to tie my shoes, after all these years, anything is possible.