JOYS OF FORGETTING

Evening Star, Issue 20149, 13 April 1929, Page 18

JOYS OF FORGETTING

THE UfWBERED MIND BANISHING UGLY MEMORIES (Written by Cybano, for the ‘ Evon- ; ing Star.’) Rending the * Supplement ’ in the tram the other clay 1 came upon the heading ‘ The Art ot Forgetting/ over an article on a bookcalled ‘The Joys of Forgetting.’ a glance at the first paragraph set a Jong train of memory going in a Hash. In a second or two I had thought of tilings I wished to forget, and 1 planned tins article. (Paragraphs, sentences, even single words, like sclents and music, will set the bells of memory ringing all down the years.) I haven’t read the book, but the reviewer’s extracts from and enthusiasm about it are enough lor my purpose. “Wo are so accustomed,’’ says the reviewer, “ to bo hectored into remembering all day long, to look to right and left and both ways, when we are in the street, to shop early, to buy books that will train our memory—that to be encouraged to forget. is simple luxury.” Then he quotes thic passage:— If a man cannot remember the names of pleasant acquaintances, ho forgets the names of bores with equal facility. If he cannot trace the tangled history of Goethe's love affairs without omitting the names of a dozen women who were once allimportant, neither does he retain the nauseous details of yesterday's divorce suit, and so his thoughts are constantly running themselves tree ot dehlement, like a mountain stream. He finds the present year more interesting because last year, in essentials so much the same, is already dim. Thus one who enjoys what is called a bad memory finds his life perpetually renewed and always wearing some hues of morning freshness.

The essayist bids us consider what we may gain by surrendering excess baggage of the mind, unnecessary worry over “ problems,” and frettul care of tho trivial and unlovely. JJ'orgeiters, he says, are honest, charitable men from whom come poets, musicians, philosophers; “they are beloved by all who know them, and are alone destined for everlasting joy for tho sufficient reason that they are happy here on earth.” The agony that a perfect memory' would entail, says the reviewer, is almost terrifyingly imagined. Just think of it! if we remembered all the unpleasant things in our lives—our failures, the nasty things said to us, tho wounding tilings written about what we hold dear, all tho sewerage of the world’s wrongs! Of course, I take it that the author do-.s not mean that we should forget things in the way of our livelihood. Forgetful people are broken reeds m the business of life. What he means is that many men and women remember a great deal that is best forgotten, and the same may be said of nations. Has it not been said that Ireland should forget and England should remember '( Heaven knows that Ireland has just cause to remember, but one of tho blessings of the Free State settlement was that it gave tho Irish something definite to do as an alternative to raking over the ashes of tho fast. It is the same with individuals. Happy the man who can forget a wrong, a slight, a disapjltointmcnt; some men nurse them all their lives, like the two friends in Bret Harte’s ‘ Iliad of Sandy Bar,’ who quarrelled because one said there was too much saleratns in tho bread. There is the London dork in Lord Dnnsany’s ‘ it, who for years remembered the morning he missed' his train because the porter wouldn’t let him through the gate. Tho refusal rankled, and he kept wishing he had caught the train. He had his wish fulfilled, and ho was plunged into Eastern adventure.

All sorts of little things drop into the rag bag of the inind and interfere with happiness. We know now much more than wo did about the effect of experience in childhood on the mind in after life. Thoughtless remarks apparently may alter the whole bent of the mind. My memory keeps calling up still, though it is many years ago, snubs and ridicule I received when I was a boy. They were incidents of no importance whatever, but they wounded at the time, and the scar is still there. And ghost stories! 1 have never quite got over the effect of’ ghastly stories told mo when I was small by thoughtless aunts and uncles, stories that for years made the dark a terror. Would that 1 could have forgotten all these 1 Then there are the absurd trifles that will stay in your head, like Mark Twain’s: A blue trip slip for a three cent fare, A pink trip slip for a five_ cent fare, Punch, brothers, punch with care, Piinch in the presence of the passenger. • You may remember how it ran through men’s heads like a damnable jangle of bells, even that of the clergyman who was trying to preach a funeral sermon. I myself have tftken guard at cricket and watched the bowler advance towards me to the tune of an absurd comic song that I could not forget. 1 did not make many runs.

Years ago a song called (T think) * Violets' was popular, and T had a friend who thought it beautiful. One day I told him of the parody, “Every morn I bring the washing, which by twilight I have boiled.” ‘‘l wish you hadn’t told me that,” he said. “I’ll never like the song again.” Here was a.man cursed with remembrance. Listening spellbound to ‘ Kins Lear,’ i could yet,

as the king finished his great cursing speech, rerpember the perversion I had read of years before; “How sharper than a serpent’s thanks it is To have n toothless child!’’ This speech almost lifted me out of my seat, but I shouldn’t have remembered this version at that moment. The joys of forgetting! Perhaps in many cases the need is not so much to forget entirely ns to keep things in the background of one’s mind. How some of us do brood over our own wrongs and the wrongs of the world! I know a man who had to give up gardening because all the time he dug and hoed ha was remembering what Lloyd George had said and done, or what Bernard Shaw had said about England. What he needed was to watch a game and have his mind taken nlf these irritants. Solitude is the state that tries the memory. If it is well stocked and under good control, how happy memory can make us when we aro alone'. Then we enjoy to the utmost the “ inward eye that is the bliss of solitude.” The beauty of the world flows into and through ns. But if we let the mosquitoes of memory plague us, what an unprofitable time we have. We remember wliat Jones said to ns when he was cross, and wo fashion what we might have said to Jones; wo construct tong defences and attacks; wo chew over old grievances, and grieve over lost opportunities. The 1 Times ’ was justified in its heading. Forgetting car. he an art as well as a joy, but. of course, these aro the same things, for all art should bo joy.