It’s OK to forget

Michael Carty

Not all moments in life need to be recalled, revisited or relived. It’s OK to forget. It’s OK to forget, let go and move on.

“Nearly everything that happens to you in your life you forget.”

This short sentence from Ian McEwan’s 2022 novel Lessons stopped me in my tracks.

As we live it, each moment in life feels significant, or has the potential to feel or even be significant. But how much difference does each moment truly make in the grand scheme of things? Is there anything wrong with forgetting nearly everything that happens to you in your life?

For much of my life, I believed that each unremembered moment was a wasted moment. This may be because I sometimes remember more than most people do. Blessed or cursed with an overactive memory, it can take as little as a glance at an old photograph for me to recall the day it was taken as if I was back in it.

I have recently had a change of mind on this. I can now realise and appreciate that it is not only natural to forget whole swathes of one’s life, but it can also be positive. It’s OK to forget. It’s OK to move on.

Progress?

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2022 was a momentous and difficult year for me. While I was living through it, each moment of last year felt as though it would be seared into my memory forever.

In a way, last year was also a time of profound change and discovery for me. I found myself on an unexpected mental health journey. I was diagnosed with mixed anxiety and depressive disorder, and embarked on a course of treatment that continues to this day. I have done my best to use this blog to write about each stage of this mental health journey as I have lived it.*

August 2023 is now here. The process of recovery is ongoing. I feel as though I am making real progress. Full recovery feels as if it might be in sight. My wife – who knows me better than anyone – thinks that I am probably 75% of the way there.

Something happened this past week that brought home to me just how much progress I seem to have made.

On the same day that I read the words from Ian McEwan that start this post, I also stumbled across some words I wrote almost a year ago, in All these moments. Returning to this post, I was struck by how vividly it brought back painful memories of the turmoil in my mind at that early stage in my mental health journey. But I was also surprised by the extent to which I had not only moved on from but also had almost forgotten how I was feeling then.

I wrote in this post about a horrible kind of mental inertia that was preventing my attempts to rest and recover. When I tried to rest…

“…my mind’s eye felt alive in almost a dream state. Bizarre, dreamlike images or memories of moments from my young life appeared before or came back to me with such clarity that I was there again. And again. All the detritus of the mind feeling as if it was shaken up and spooling out in random order. The projector of all life’s moments gone haywire.”

With time it became clear that the only way through was for me to allow things to play out at their own pace:

“As much as I wanted to rest, this process would not be hurried. It seemed that my unconscious mind had to be allowed to run its course, from first random memory or weird image to last, in its own good time.”

These words brought back to me exactly how I was feeling at that moment, where I was in this mental health journey. I am delighted to report that this horrible feeling of mental inertia has not even crossed my mind for some months now. The fact that I needed these words to prompt my memory has taught me a lesson: There are times when it is OK to forget. Forgetting or letting go of intense and unpleasant feelings can work wonders.

Each step is important

Footprints of Bliss

This is not to devalue or diminish what each individual moment might mean to us as we experience it. Just because we might ultimately forget, let go of or otherwise move on from difficult times does not lessen their difficulty. Each step in any mental health journey is just as important as both the one before and the one that will follow.

Taking the first step on your own mental health journey might well be the most important thing you ever do. I have committed myself to writing about each step in my mental health journey in case my own example might be of any small help to even one other soul. As I wrote in The sun will return:

“I want anyone and everyone who might feel that they are struggling with a mental health issue (or who might know someone who is), that they are not alone.

“You are not alone. You are never alone. Others have been this way before you, and still more will follow you down this path. If you ask for help, you will be amazed at the forces that come to your aid. Please do not suffer alone or in silence. The help you need is likely there for you.”

There is always hope. You can turn it all around. Day can (and more than likely will) always follow night.

As we roll along, swept up in life’s relentless forward motion, each step feels urgent, vital and all-consuming. Every moment in life, every action, every step we take has the potential to feel or even to be significant, memorable.

Yet each step we take will likely leave as little lasting trace as footprints on a beach. The winds that spread the sands and the tides that wash them clean will in all probability remove all trace, all memory of what we did in that moment, and what that moment meant to us.

Not all moments in life need to be recalled, revisited or relived. It’s OK to forget. It’s OK to forget, let go and move on.

May you be nothing but kind today, to others and to yourself.

May today be nothing but kind to you and yours.

RESOURCES

  • Mental health (NHS) Information and support for your mental health from the NHS.
  • Information and support (Mind) Resources from Mind, the UK mental health charity.
  • NAMI Homefront (NAMI) Online resources from US charity NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness).
  • SANE Australia Visit the site of this “national mental health charity making a real difference in the lives of people affected by complex mental health issues”.

FOOTNOTES

* I  have written about my ongoing mental health journey in the following posts: Into the infinity of thoughts; Renewal; and No words?; Mental health first response; Glorify; In our darkest hours; and At the heart of things; No feeling is final; Relax harder.; and Anxiety: Your own worst enemy; All these moments; and Mental health: Six things I’ve learnt in 2022; Coping?; The sun will return; Gratitude; Mental health: Night and day; Transitions; and Peace? 

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