Habitual forgetfulness

An entry on John's blog spurs this one. I've considered writing about (and maybe have mentioned?) a particular trait of mine: I'm forgetful.

Some afternoons I couldn't remember what I ate for breakfast, but it's not that kind of forgetfulness. Those things happen. I don't always set my keys down in the same place, nor my sunglasses or watch. I'm better off when things have a Place and I actually put them There; otherwise I'm dependent upon spotting the wayward object.

No, I just forget what it was like. There was a year when I was quite lonely; from my writing, I'm pretty sure it sucked. Don't remember what it was like, and forgot speedily. There's somebody I'm not friends with anymore; I found a note to a friend that indicates some grievious harm was done, but I can't remember what that was. Just as well. This all is similar to what Andrew talked about awhile ago; I seem to do it constantly.

Who knows what else I've discovered and forgotten! Things are particularly likely to be forgotten if they're written down. For a long time, I've said that I don't need to remember things, but know how to find the information. Maybe that attitude has precipitated forgetfulness. (If the alternative is constant worry that information will be lost, I'll stay on this side of the fence, thank you!) There is so much information in architecture that we're really better off getting it into the drawings - then anybody can find the answer.

But at the same time, I've made some marvelous discoveries on the nature of Things, recorded them (here, generally) and forgotten the incident entirely. Sometimes whatever-it-is gets pretty well internalized, and I forget about life without this now-obvious fact. Other times, the fact and recording are both forgotten.

Things between the meta and minute orders are forgotten as well. There'll be a discussion on something Important, and I may not only forget the contents of the discussion, but sometimes that it happened.

This all amuses me because science thinks the universe might be cyclical, and Tolle says we're all little microcosms of the universe.

Here I am, a happy little universe, forgetful as can be!

(There's probably a briefer and more complete analysis than this - not to mention more elegant! - but then I'd be sitting on the post for weeks and lose the impulse that entertained me enough to write.)

As the theme lately has been data interpretation, I found this sentence to be telling, and mention it also:

Loop Quantum Gravity . . . is now a leading approach to the goal of unifying general relativity with quantum physics.