CLXVII: Lethe

Like most girls, or rather, women, I am prone to mood swings. Not so much within a day but between a few days. These may be spurred on by internal stimuli, such as hormones, energy levels, thoughts (this is the most common perpetrator), or external stimuli, like the weather, absence/excess of social interaction, or certain situations that are thrust upon me.

I feel much calmer and happier today than I did a couple of days ago, when my mind was turbulent and fixed upon one goal which will not be named. But last night, as I shut Chloe off, I easily said "goodbye" at the sound of her closing and was not addressing my MacBook. It was easy, painless, and I haven't looked back.

It's hard to forget some things and yet much too easy to forget the rest. The things we can't let go of hold a permanent spot in our hearts or minds and we may never find the right antidote. People have many solutions, most of them temporary, and these range from avoidance to defensiveness to projection. Then there are imaginative methods that are the subject of literature and film. Most notably, to me at least, is the notion of deleting one's memories--the premise of one of my favourite movies, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

As tempting as it is to take shortcuts such as these, though fictional, I can't help but think that this is the worst way to move on. It's the equivalent of taking antibiotics instead of letting your immune system fight off a virus.

Some of the ancient Greeks (how I love to refer to them!) believed that in the afterlife, the souls of the dead would surround Lethe, the river of forgetfulness, and drink its water. Upon forgetting all from their former lives, they would be reincarnated.

I would not be able to bear forgetting my life, nor would I be able to bear being forgotten. It's why Alzheimer's is so scary of a disease. And so, given the choice (which for I am grateful), I choose to progress but not forget.

...I am a part of all that I have met; 

Yet all experience is an arch wherethro’ 

Gleams that untravell’d world whose margin fades 

For ever and forever when I move. 

How dull it is to pause, to make an end, 

To rust unburnish’d, not to shine in use! 

As tho’ to breathe were life! Life piled on life 

Were all too little, and of one to me 

Little remains: but every hour is saved 

From that eternal silence, something more, 

A bringer of new things...

An excerpt from Alfred Lord Tennyson's Ulysses