The Harried Mystic

According to Plato, “all is remembrance.” But, there is so much that I’ve forgotten.

With each passing year, I lose more of what I once knew. As I catalogue the range of topics into which my lost memories fall, they include:

• song titles and artists,
• names of theorists,
• book titles and authors,
• names of key attractions in some cities around the world,
• where I left my car keys, pens, collar stays, cuff links and belt,
• how to drive to certain regional destinations I’ve visited in the past without benefit of a GPS device,
• names of computer files, documents and passwords, and,
• lists of things I need from the supermarket.

Hmm. Now that I look at the list, most of the items on it ( except for my car keys and maybe my belt), are trivial, unimportant clutter. In reality, it’s not that the brain is “winding down” with age. It’s just cleaning house. With each year, in fact, I am remembering things that I experienced years ago and doing so with added meaning. The time machine of mind replays the past so that more recent experiences can look at them with new perspective and through new lenses.

Memories are reintegrating, clustering, and interconnecting in novel ways. In our Western societies, aging is too often interpreted as degradation, an unwinding, a devolutionary experience, and deterioration.The social programming is strong and after the age of 50, one hears people talking about themselves as anachronistic. Every ache and every pain is enlarged as further proof that best days are no longer ahead. This is altogether a brainwashing; a set of expectations baked into the culture and its worship of youth. We can learn much by looking to the Far East.

In fact, the so-called “senior moment” certainly need not be a cause for embarrassment, apology, nor a fretting over the march of time. On the contrary, with the exception of diagnosed neurological disease, it is merely a sign of learning taken to the next level. Bits and bytes are rewoven into whole cloth, and the narrative storyline of a life emerges.

I raise a toast to the senior moments in celebrating their function as a cleanser for the soul. To forget some things is to make room for new ones. All learning requires forgetting.

© Brother Anton and The Harried Mystic, 2009. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited.