Mnemophobia

I started carrying blank books like this one around, thats how it started. At the end of each day I would take the book to bed with me and read through the pages of my life. Jonathan Safran Foer

Forgetting is my great fear. Not death, loneliness, or pain. No, I am terrified of forgetfulness. I anxiously scribble to-do lists on magazine covers, journal on the back of napkins, and drown dog-eared pages of books in ink. Don't forget to reply to his e-mail! Read more about learned optimism. Remember to journal about the beautiful walk you took with her! The digitization of photographs, video, and text has made it simple to store records of our experiences indefinitely. But while it seems that remembering should be easier in the digital age, the more I've done to preserve my memories the greater my fear of forgetting has grown. The root of this dread is that the act of remembrance is forgetting in reverse. Learning, growth, the development of skill and expertise: these are all byproducts of remembering. With any type of growth, reflection and self-observance are vital. My fear is sunk in the understanding that forgetfulness is not selective. We not only forget the mundane, the unimportant, and the trite. We also forget the visceral, the holy, and the meaningful, sometimes just as easily. We forget things that are unimportant but we also forget things that are imperative to our understandings of self and the worlds we create. And when we forget we experience loss. We lose memories and we lose any imbedded meaning. In simple terms, I am afraid of losing the shallow bits of meaning I have already found.

A Guide to Purpose
The stars we are given. The constellations we make. That is to say, stars exist in the cosmos, but constellations are the imaginary lines we draw between them, the readings we give the sky, the stories we tell. Rebecca Solnit Human beings crave meaning more than life, happiness, sex, food, or love. We look up in the sky and say that a few small clusters of stars look like a bull. We call them Taurus. We invent gods who give us a reason to exist or deny their existence as proof that we ourselves inhabit meaning. Even to scream, "There is no meaning!" suggests that there could be or should be some reason for this big complicated universe. When people "find" meaning, they cling to it irrationally: scribbling journals, shooting home movies, and retelling stories. Even art: music, films, photographs, tattoos, sculptures, and architecture are preventative measures taken to prolong remembrance and preserve meaning. We do these things because meaning provides comfort. It supplies balance in an every changing world. Meaning drives culture, inspires creation, and answers the question why? Meaning provides utility to existence. It gives purpose to the otherwise absurd breaths of life we exhale each moment.

Even as a fabrication, meaning is incredibly important to the human mind. Psychologically it is something one should want to hold on to, cherish, nurture and guard. Everyone has witnessed the perceived importance of meaning: people unwilling to change, accept new ideas, or shift views. Meaning is paramount and most people are unwilling to give up the security of a specific set of ideals for a simple pat on the back. It makes sense, giving up meaning and discarding ones purpose is counterintuitive. Our brains dont want to change! Why would someone throw away memories, ideals, or morals? Why wouldnt we do all we could to preserve the things that make us who we are? Why let go of the things that provide purpose? There may only be one good answer: meaning isnt truth.

Meaning in the absence of Truth

There is no truth, there is only you and what you make the truth. Conor Oberst If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning. C.S. Lewis I do not believe any objective truth exists; however, I do believe that the human mind can construct meaning. There should be meaning and there must be but what is the difference between truth and meaning? In the context of this writing, truth is an absolute. It is law, certainty, predictable and reliable. Meaning; however, is constantly in flux. This is the nature of an absurd universe. We choose to believe what we need to believe to survive. The memories we preserve and the meaning we select are just as far from the capital t Truth as the things we forget. I have created meaning and a version of the truth that provided me whatever I needed at the time. Comfort, hope, self-loathing, or certainty - The things I needed to believe, became meaningful. The human process of creating meaning is a way to accept (justify) struggles and appreciate (celebrate) beauty. Meaning is malleable. It must be fluid if it hopes to act as a guide in a world that is constantly changing. Buddhism teaches detachment or the act of letting go. Achieving peace is dependent on your ability to un-want, to give up. Practicing true detachment is difficult, especially in the case of forgetfulness. Letting go of material objects or destructive emotions like anger and lust seems simple compared to releasing the fear of forgetting. "How do you 'let go' of your fear of 'letting go' of memories?" Is it possible to embrace forgetfulness? Is it wise to relinquish meaning? Janwillem van de Wetering addresses this issue
in his memoir A Glimpse of Nothingness.

Detachable Meaning
The old master warned us not to hang on to the koans we had passed but to throw them away, as we throw away used pieces of tissue. Janwillem van de Wetering It seems to me that letting go is different than forgetting. Letting go says, Im unafraid to forget. Im hopeful. I know that if my thoughts, memories, and growth are important, they will stay with me regardless of my desire to hold on to them. Grocery lists, history books, cave paintings, VHS tapes, and gravestones - any intentional relic to past meaning is a barricade in the way of true detachment. Some memory functions as a helpful guide but most deliberate preservation serves only to allow outdated emotions to linger and doubt to destroy necessary growth. They are practiced forms of clinging attachment in its purest form. So how does one grow and learn from the past, while forgetting it at the same time. How can I let go of a personal meaning that is always changing, grounded in the past but affected by the present?

Lethe (or Natural Buddhism)

To be able to forget means sanity. Jack London Without forgetting it is quite impossible to live at all. Friedrich Nietzsche The Greeks had a solution for all of this a method to accept the absurd. In their underworld, there was a river named Lethe and all who drank from it experienced complete forgetfulness. Lethe flowed through the cave of Hypnos, the god of sleep, and all new souls would drink from the river before being reincarnated, erasing the memories of their past lives and making room for a new ones. The waters of Lethe reset spirits and recycled life. So maybe forgetting is a survival mechanism, an inherited trait of the mentally healthy. If this is so than letting go is biologically wired in us. Its a Buddhist trait were born with. Without it we'd be cursed to live with our mistakes, cling to past happiness, and never let go never move forward. Maybe forgetting is true detachment or natural detachment. Maybe forgetting is good. At least until we have adjusted our meaning. I am sure to always struggle with my fear of forgetting, especially precious memories of the people I have loved and the moments we have shared; however, my meaning must change and some memories must be lost. To live again, to create new meaning, and to experience life in a more unattached way, dipping into Lethe and being reborn daily is a practice that should be welcomed as vital to my peace. This year, Im giving up memories, forgetting mistakes and achievements alike. I choose to release fear and stand in the present, mindful of what has been and what will be, completely immersed in now - welcoming forgetfulness and cherishing each precious moment. So stop searching for meaning. Give up! Accept meaning as it comes to you and willing let it leave. While forgetfulness isnt selective, we become the things we practice. Meaning imbeds itself in Us. We change and we forget our old selves. What a beautiful thing!

The art of living... is neither careless drifting on the one hand nor fearful clinging to the past on the other. It consists in being sensitive to each moment, in regarding it as utterly new and unique, in having the mind open and wholly receptive. And people get all fouled up because they want the world to have meaning as if it were words... As if you had a meaning, as if you were a mere word, as if you were something that could be looked up in a dictionary. You are meaning. Alan Watts