ABSTRACT
P eople usually think of forgetting as something bad. It is to lose our cherished past, to forget friends’ names,
and to neglect our responsibilities. But as Jill Price’s remarkable memory (discussed in Chapter 9) illustrates, forgetting may be more desirable than we think. Price often yearns to forget, so that she can avoid continually reliving the events and emotions of terrible times. She has difficulty “letting go” and ‘getting past” things that most of us get over quickly. These sentiments reveal that more often than we realize, forgetting is exactly what we need to do. Sometimes we confront reminders of experiences that sadden us, as when after the death of a loved one, or after a broken relationship, objects and places evoke memories of the lost person. Other times, reminders trigger memories that make us angry, anxious, guilty, ashamed, or embarrassed; a face may remind us of an argument that we hope to get past; an envelope may bring to mind a very unpleasant task we are avoiding; or an image of the World Trade Center in a movie may elicit upsetting memories of 11 September. In the popular film, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, the main character, Joel, suffers so badly from memories of his lost love, Clementine, he seeks out a memory deletion clinic, to have all memories of her removed from his brain. Unfortunately, though we might at times yearn for them, no such clinics exist, and we cannot avoid life’s tendency to insert memories we wish were not there.
