“You forget what you want to remember and you remember what you want to forget.”
What Does It Mean?
This simple line from author Cormac McCarthy's novel The Road is one of the most highlighted verses in fiction on Amazon Kindle.
But they can feel troubling. We want to have control over what we remember. We want to remember the good and forget the bad.
If we consider these words closely, however, they can serve as a prod, an encouragement, to think carefully about memory and some basic truths about it. This reflection can help anyone, especially people of faith who take remembering the past seriously.
1. We really don't control what we remember: When something wonderful happens to us, we often say, "I'll remember this for the rest of my life."
We want to be able to recall the feeling we have at that moment. But will we? Who knows? We might, or we might not. Often we don't.
It's not only experiences we forget. Sometimes we forget our sense of purpose, our mission, our place in the world.
We become what Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel called "a messenger who forgot the message." We don't mean to forget, but the noise and urgency of daily life can hide what matters most.
Sometimes we also remember things we would rather forget. We can be in a meeting and remember something awkward we said at another meeting just like this.
We can start daydreaming and thinking about something totally unrelated to what we are doing. Sometimes our mind seems to have a mind of its own!
2. Memories can hurt and heal: What causes us to remember or forget? Many psychologists say the emotional valence of the experience makes a big difference. If something evokes a strong emotional response, we are more likely to remember it.
Consider, for example, that many of us remember where we were and what we doing the morning of September 11th, 2001. The shock of the event imprinted itself in our minds so much so that we remember exactly where we were more than twenty years ago.
But sometimes the opposite is true. The only way we can deal with some negative memories is to forget them. Our minds block erase to protect us from the pain associated with it.
Can remembering something help us heal from it? Perhaps. But Jewish tradition offers a different approach. It is not our memory that heals. It is God's remembering of us. We forget. God does not.
It is not our memory that heals. It is God's remembering of us. We forget. God does not.
The Exodus from Egypt begins, as Torah puts it, when God remembered Israel. We are more than what we remember. We are what God remembers.
3. Remember for Today: The Old Testament commands the Israelites to remember hundreds of times! Why? What is the purpose of remembering?
One reason is to connect us to our ancestors. Remembering the events and people of our past connects us to them. We feel part of a chain of tradition.
Another reason is to bring us closer to God. We remember God freeing our ancestors from Egypt and revealing the Ten Commandments. Christians remember Jesus dying on the cross. Memory strengthens faith.
But the Hebrew Bible often associates memory with action. In other words, remembering leads to doing.
We remember not only for its own sake. We remember to preserve values, to guide, to inspire, to strengthen, and much more. We remember so we can act with purpose.
Memory cannot change the past. But it gives us the guidance and courage to shape the future. We may not control what we remember, but we can decide what to do with it, here, now.