Wondering if “Unlearning how to remember” = “Learning to Forget”?

In our kindergarten days we played innumerable games such as building blocks, card games, board games which would help us to build a strong memory and remember things. After that when we went to school we were taught how to remember and memorize tables, answers for questions, fill-in-the-blanks, match the following and thousand such other things. Then moving to college we were taught to remember some advanced stuff. Ditto at work.

Well during all our life, we were taught how to remember. This shows how important it is in our life to remember things. Our sustenance is on remembering things. If life is a coin then remembering makes it’s one side.

My memory is strong enough because I always excelled at these games, but I do not remember a single moment where I was taught to forget things. If remembrance is important, then forgetting is equally important too. Forgetting hence makes the other side of the coin here. But just wondering why we were never taught “how to forget things”. Maybe the forget lessons do not exist. Or maybe the subject was very difficult to teach that god decided to leave it for the best teacher, Life, to deliver the “forget lessons”. I guess you folks agree too.

If remembering things gives us joy, happiness, sorrow, peace of mind, satisfaction then forgetting things does the same. Remembering pain gives us sorrow and forgetting pain gives us solace. Forgetting joyful moments gives us sorrow and remembering sorrow takes away our solace. This clearly approves how opposite the two sides are and so are their effects. So the question here is: does unlearning how to remember equals the art of forgetting things

I would not want to emphasize on why one should forget, but would surely like to emphasize on what is meant by forgetting. A lady defined the meaning of forgetting to me when I was out for a casual walk one evening. She had an explanation which made sense to me. As per her, there exists no concept of forgetting in this world. She defines forgetting as “Living with the things happened (which you want to forget) without letting them affect you. If you let those things affect you, then you will never be able to forget them. But if you allow them to not affect you, then you are certain to forget them. Virtually”. This simple statement was self-explanatory for me to learn how to forget.

Human mind is just like a penseive in which we actively store, by the act of remembering, our good and bad memories. We thrive and live our life by cherishing on these instances. So it’s not about unlearning how to remember, but learning how to remember and at the same time not letting it affect you.

Now we may concoct the fact why forget lessons do not exist upfront. Maybe because the concept of forgetting itself does not exist upfront. As per my personal view, the concept pseudo-exists and is revealed by life at an appropriate stage. The most important lessons are best taught and learnt in context instead in text. I have learnt my lessons in context hence sharing them in text here.

Lost Innocence ??

I visited my school after 10 years after passing out in the year 2000 for the first time.. I saw something that was leaps and bounds ahead from what my school days were.

I still remember how I used to travel to my school during early days. I used to either go by my school bus or maybe walking (since the distance was too short) or maybe on the bicycle with friends. Rarely we enjoyed the luxury travels of the BEST bus or more luxuriously the autorickshaw. I used to carry my own bag and dabba. Bag was a normal one you buy from the Andheri station and the stainless steel dabba was nicely stuffed with simple mom-made lunch. Had just two sets of uniforms which were bought from Glory in 4 bungalows. Regarding my sports wear, it were simple too. Shoes were the normal canvas ones (corona brand.. I still remember). My stationery box had simple Raymond pen and wood pencils which were enough for me to write my home assignments. During my birthday, I used to offer simple sweets which would not cost more than 50 paise to my classmates, close friends and my birthday parities if any would be just limited to the Rasna party with the slice cake and some wafer chips. This was more or less the story for all my batchmates. Obviously there were exceptions, but the numbers could be counted on finger-tips.

Today, the children come in the high-end chauffer driven luxury cars that I desire at this stage and during my school days were limited to the text book stickers or book covers. The children seem weak since they can’t lift their Adidas bags and their elite tiffin boxes, hence are accompanied by their maids. The weakness of the kids can be surely attributed to the McDonalds and KFC snacks in their tiffins or maybe the easy travel to the school did not let them strengthen their shoulders to carry bags. Well during their sports class, they don Nike sports wear and air cushioned shoes which were only limited to the international sports stars during my young days. They carry pens which I guess my boss has just one at this stage of his life. Sorry sir can’t help mentioning this. They carry inbuilt camera cell phones to keep them connected to their friends via Facebook mobile and iPods to keep them entertained all time with favorite music. Just wondering if their call bills are more than my official cell bills. Well just heard from my teacher that one person threw his birthday party in a luxurious 5-star hotel banquet hall and cell phones were the return gifts to the invited ones. This is more or less the story for all the current batchmates. Obviously there are exceptions, who live the school days like I lived, but the numbers can be counted on fingertips.

Kids have truly lost the innocence these days. They speak fluent English but stammer while speaking in their mother tongue. We hardly used to back answer or rudely behave with our parents. Today, kids hardly behave well with their parents and hardly listen to them. Their innocence has been replaced by arrogance and attitude which is increasing day by day. Just pondering on the reason for the lost innocence.

As per my understanding the reason for this can be mostly attributed to the unnecessary extra care that parents take these days. Parents do not want their kids to witness the hardships they witnessed and would like to make things happen for them at their wish. It’s a good thought, but unknowingly is affecting the overall personality of the child and the generation to come next. Reason for me write on such topic is that I have closely witnessed the effects of such pampering by parents. This shielding from hardships does not do any good, but does lot of bad to them instead.

This reminds me of one story in somewhat similar context, that’s of King Śuddhodana, who was wishing for his son Siddhartha to be a great king, shielded him from knowledge of human suffering. But finally this guarding did nothing good to the father. He lost his son who then became known as Buddha for us. Here I am not trrying to say that by shielding you are going to nurture another Buddha for the society, but would like to emphasize the fact that this created distances between the father and the son. The son moved on his way to become the great man, but not all are lucky to have such sons.

It feels that as day-by-day our generation is progressing in the new generation, we as people are regressing with our thought processes. We are becoming more insecure about our existence and even more about our generation to come. Its time we realize that we should ideally care about our kids and how they grow and not about how they look or what they wear. Whenever we think of children, the first thing that comes to our mind is innocence and naivety. A child is the purest form of a human being as he is not yet casted by the harsh realities of life. All his activities bring forth his true feelings and he is not bothered about what people think of him. Children also become the reason for happiness and joy of the grand parents as they are able to relive and relish their childhood once more by watching their grandchildren grow in front of their eyes. I do not see my childhood in today’s kids hence I say innocence needs to be restored in kids.

As they says “To nourish children and raise them against odds is in any time, any place, more valuable than to fix bolts in cars or design nuclear weapons.”

Comprehending Life. Hinging on Hope.

Resuming to write my blog after ages. Reason for not writing, more aptly should be called an excuse, I was busy in the career “Rat Race”. Now the reason to write, no need of excuse here, is to just express myself on my virtual space. Friends, need no forced comments or any “like” tags for what I write. You might find it useful or might find it crap but. I do not believe much in announcing my life but believe in sharing it. Hope it’s helpful to you all in some way.

Few months ago, my friend, “Chief” made one of the hardest hitting statements I have come across. He said, “Life is what happens to you when you are busy planning something else”. Some months down the line, Life just happened to me. Now how to get back is the answer. Wish I could just attach some springs to my shoes to bounce back. Then found there exists such “spring”.

Regarding life, some people say it’s very difficult to predict future, results and outcomes and the rest would say it’s impossible. These two factions exist because the ones who say its difficult are hopeful whereas the others who say its impossible have no ray of hope. I prefer to belong to the former category; living with hope. Hope infuses you to achieve when you falter in life. Without hope things seem impossible, but with hope things will definitely not be impossible. Things might be difficult but still they are possible. Hope is the sole reason to try and move ahead after what has happened. After a quake which shatters ones house, the person still goes back to that place and builds a new house. He does not worry about a second quake. That’s the power of hope. Hope propels one to live life and not to end life.

Hope acted as the spring in my feet which allowed me to bounce back to live life. It has infused renewed strength in me. It has taught me a lot. Being in the corporate world we used to get such “hope” related mails once every week from some or the other colleague. I used to discount them as regular ones after reading and never got the true message of the mail. But the message is conveyed now when life “happened” to me.

Hope is must to live life. Since one will certainly fail at least once during his life. He would have achieved a lot before that but that single failure might take away all that he earned. But if he hinges on hope then he will be able to bounce back and ensure that he hoards what he earned. Well this might sound just a normal thing you must have read somewhere but for me it’s something I have met with and experienced it.

Surely reading about life and hope is good. But experiencing it is any day better.

To comprehend and live life, I hinge on hope. Do you??