On Purification

[sdi]

We forget everything when we enter the world.

  Why do we forget?

So we can remember what is important again.

  Why do we remember?

It's a purification process: in each pass, that which is not important is lost. The dross is left behind and only the fine remains. When one is fine enough...

Comments

[sdi]

It's funny, I have something of the opposite problem, of forgetting: it seems I can only retain a few weeks at best and need to keep copious notes in notebooks so I can refer back to them. I thrive on consistency and discipline: keys ALWAYS go in the same place, passwords ALWAYS follow a specific pattern, that sort of thing, otherwise I just can't navigate at all. (My wife jokes that it took me seven years to finally memorize her phone number, and that she can't change it ever or I'll never be able to get in touch with her.)

One of the things I've always struggled with is understanding the ego: I don't really have a coherent sense of identity, or what people mean by identifying with and emotionally investing in things. I wonder if the reason for that is that I can't remember enough to form a consistent story arc for myself.

Oddly, the one thing exempt from this seems to be technical knowledge. Ask me about math or algorithms or whatever and I can rattle off obscurities going back decades. It's just the rest of life that doesn't seem to stick...