We are told to never look back. We are told to look forward. We are told to forget the past. Millennials post “YOLO” and “no regrets” on social media, brandishing the phrases as their personal slogans for a brighter, better tomorrow. The key to happiness has apparently become as easy as deleting folders on your desktop. But can we really forget the past?
Maybe. Psychologists have been studying and researching how the brain naturally forgets things, like when we forget our keys or wallets, to figure out ways we would be able to selectively forget memories. One method they have been testing requires you to repeatedly stop yourself every time the memory you are trying to forget starts to play.
Most people probably already do this instinctively, especially when the memories threaten to pull us under. But imagine if this method actually worked. Imagine what this would mean for people who have suffered and been traumatized by rape and other forms of sexual, emotional, and physical abuse. Imagine what this would mean for people who suffer from PTSD.
I think we can all agree that being able to forget these memories would be nothing short of a blessing and necessity for those who are plagued by and live under the shadow of their traumas. At the same time, if this method could work, I can easily see the method being used to erase the trivial. We would choose to forget the first time we went on stage, the awkward first date, the painful breakups. We might choose to forget ever having met someone, even the good moments.
Forgetting cannot always be the answer. We learn from the past and use it in our present. Our mistakes, even those despicable, cringey moments in our adolescence, have shaped us to become the people we are today. Isn’t that what the human experience is all about?
We do not have to forcefully remind ourselves of things in our past we’d rather forget but we do not have to forget them, either. Despite their implicit negativity, every moment of your past is tinged with lots of other feelings. The first time you went on stage is connected to living with your family and laughing with your friends and staying up late at night during sleepovers. The awkward first date is connected to those cute moments that came later, the first kiss, the dizzying feelings of experiencing your first love. If you forget the bad, you also forget the good. The good goes hand in hand with the bad.
I don’t know about you but I would take the bad memories as long as it means I get to keep the good ones. So, if you had the choice to selectively forget, would you?
