-- Some Things Needn’t Be Remembered --
John Herlihy
Some things that we forget,
We actually wish to remember.
Worse, some things we remember,
We could do better to forget.
Remembering can be a mystery,
A lost incident returns in passing.
Was that random person really me?
An insignificant event now lasting.
The mind’s selection surely strange,
A memory lodged in a crack in the wall.
Why not more meaningfully arranged?
Some things never remembered at all.
Memory can be a subtle way to remind,
Of the alter-ego that we once had been.
The memory just trying hard to be kind,
From the far distant past way back when.
Some things needn’t be remembered,
Just as some things needn’t be forgotten.
In the body of life some things dismembered,
While others, held in retrospect, begotten.
- - - - - -
Copyright ©John Herlihy
Tuesday 8 June 2021
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I've studied a little bit about it. Psychologists have learned that as we age, we tend to forget bad things unless they were particularly severe enough for them to come to mind, sometimes, too often. But in other cases they become hidden, not forgotten, but buried. That's what psychiatrists do, dig for those buried treasures revealing what's wrong with people that have a mental problem.
The sharper the incident or the more memorable, the more likely it will be remembered. The more often the thought is thought of, it will remain in memory. Right now, I'm recalling old songs from my past that I sang often in school and in choirs, like Christmas carols. Where I remember every word without even thinking about it. Repetition does that.
I love it when a memory I had thought I had forgotten suddenly pops into my mind. But then there are times when I wish I could remember what happened, but I can't.
Ron