Rememberall

I’d like to piggyback off my last post, Strive Purely. I’ll confess that I didn’t actually need to hear those words last week. I felt great. I was able to do everything I wanted, no problems. This week, not so much. I realize now that it was a mistake to write Strive Purely in the past tense, like it was over and done with. Far from it.

Acceptance and letting go aren’t one time events. They must always be happening. It’s not like “oh I love myself now, I’m good forever” or “I’ve accepted this now I can move on with the rest of my life and never face this again.” I often get caught up thinking like this. That just because I let go or accepted something today means that it won’t come up again tomorrow. And I’ve learned that that’s just not how this works.

I think this is human nature and happens mostly without us even being aware of it. When was the last time you learned a lesson and afterwards thought “I’ll have to go through this all again someday”? Overconfidence is a bias I think most of us have, especially in our own abilities. We achieve a certain mind-state, which by definition constantly change, and project it out indefinitely into the future. Always assuming that we will have this knowledge and use it correctly. The second we finish learning the lesson our narrative generators start spinning. We come up with this beautiful story about how we will always be like this. Only to be frustrated when we meet the same problem again tomorrow. And it’s funny, we think “I already did that, I don’t have to do it again”, convinced that the solutions of yesterday won’t work today. We know the answers to the test, we just have to remind ourselves of them.

Easier said than done, though. We think of being outwardly humble as a noble trait. And it is. But very rarely do we think about being humble towards ourselves. It’s hard to do because re-learning a lesson involves admitting to yourself that you forgot it. Acknowledging that you forgot is the first step to remembering. The self-critic is eager to pounce here, so it’s important to give ourselves this gentle reminder nudge with compassion and not spite.

Too bad we don’t have the rememberalls from Harry Potter. If we did, man,  would this be a whole lot easier. Doing work like this doesn’t happen overnight. Like anything, patience and persistence will get us to where we want to go. Circumstances are always changing and with that we have to learn and re-learn the same lessons in different context each and everyday. That’s just the way it is. I’ve realized that it’s not so much about the knowing, but the remembering.

 

The only problem is, I can't remember what I've forgotten.