Of course you'll forget

note to no-self

So listen, you’re gonna have to get used to repetition because you will spend the rest of your life remembering and forgetting. It’s going to happen again and again in an endless cycle, and every time you remember you’ll laugh at yourself, you’ll facepalm, you’ll think, “of course.” And then soon enough before you know it you’ll forget again. You’ll become distracted.

You’ll remember when you’re standing in the shower, feeling a sudden urge to pause the music and listen to all the sounds around you, locate yourself back inside your head and body, feel everything from your toes to your legs and arms and shoulders and back. You’ll remember again and you’ll feel yourself relax, you’ll feel the world collapse into an eternal present, but before eternity full takes hold of you, you’ll start forgetting again.

You’ll remember when you think to yourself: oh wait, it doesn’t matter that much whether I “finally” get in shape, whether I “finally” find community, finally settle down, finally get a clear career path. You’ll forget again when you’re meeting someone new at a party and have to explain yourself and your life path to their prying eyes in a split second.

You’ll remember when you take a few days off from work, you’ll remember when you see your parents for the first time in five months and say goodbye to them again. You’ll remember when you get one and a half day with your aunt for the first time in a decade before she too has to fly back home.

You’ll remember when you sit and meditate for long enough. But as soon as you remember you’ll forget. You have to make sure you sit for quite a while. The more you’re used to sitting, the longer you’ll have to sit in order to remember again. Unlike all your other memories this is not one you can willfully call to mind. Spaced repetition won’t do it either. It is a memory that comes to you on its own schedule. It is more like a spirit that chooses to possess you than a muscle you can voluntarily active. You simply set the conditions, silence the noise, light the candles, and wait to see if it appears. Oh wait—there it is right there. You just lost it.

You will remember on the worst day of your life, and also on the best day of your life. You’ll remember on your ordinary days. On a facetime call that feels like a timeless moment inside a spaceship, far away from earth and everything else in your life, disconnected, a home of its own. You’ll remember in some of your dreams, the ones that leave you waking up with a sense of peace.

The best teachers are the ones that help you remember. They will make you go: wait, really? Is it this again? I thought I covered this already. Look, here, I had a whole transformation about it years ago, I did this whole meditation retreat, I wrote blog posts about how important this was. People liked it! People liked the blog posts. My teacher told me it was very well-written. There’s no way I’ve forgotten. You’re telling me it happened again? And that this will keep happening?

And look, I hear you on the frustration. But aren’t you glad that you got to remember and forget at least a few times, rather than never having remembered in the first place? Hey dad, do you remember? How often do you forget? Do you think when we die, it feels more like remembering or like forgetting?

The meditators say that if you sit long and hard enough, one day you’ll remember and never forget again. But we’re not gonna hold out hope for that. We don’t have the time. What if forgetting isn’t actually a problem? At least, that’s how it feels when I truly remember. Every time I remember, without fail, it suddenly doesn’t matter that I forgot so many times. That is the joke that the universe plays on us. All of our supposed mistakes add up to perfection.

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Thanks to Suzanne for feedback.