When I was in fifth grade, I used to listen to audiobooks. My favorite was C. S. Lewis’ The Silver Chair; I eventually listened to it so many times that I memorized the whole thing and would retell the story to my sisters as we drove to school with my dad in the mornings. Those who have read this story know that memory pervades the entire tale. Before sending them on a quest, Aslan gives Eustace Scrubb and Jill Pole certain signs to remind them to stay on the right path. He earnestly instructs them to “remember, remember the signs,” and warns them that “the air will thicken” and their memory will wane as they journey down into a cave to rescue a prince. Like them, my memory has also waned—I have not only lost my memory of most of The Silver Chair, but I often forget many other important things as I continue down from childhood into my adult life.
One thing that is easy for many people to forget is to actively try to remember what they should remember and also to forget what they should forget. This is why when someone learns a language they won’t keep it if they don’t actively use it. It’s also why one shouldn’t dwell too long on little mistakes one made way back in junior high (of course we’ve all probably experienced that moment when we’re about to fall soundly asleep and an embarrassing memory pops into our head for no discernible reason). But remembering to remember and forget the right things also applies to deeper, more sensitive matters as well, because in a very real way remembrance is the golden thread that binds us together with one another in loving relationships. The pinnacle of our faith, hope, and love as Christians finds expression in the words of our Lord, “do this in remembrance of me.” Yet surprisingly we are also told in Phillipians to forget the things which lie behind and strain toward what lies ahead. So it’s not only remembering what we ought to remember but forgetting what we ought to forget that binds us together in love for God and love for our neighbor. What are some practical applications of this then? Well, in our personal relationships, whatever the nature of the relationship, as well as in our relationship with God, we should make it a habit of reflecting upon what we should remember and what we should forget.
I used to think that the old adage “forgive and forget,” made no sense. Sure we should forgive, but why should we forget? After all, if we want to make progress in our relationships, we need to remember the wrongs that we have done against our beloved so that we can be sure not to do them again. I never quite approached the thought that we should keep a record of our beloved’s wrongs because that certainly seems villainous, and Scripture is explicit that you should not keep a record of wrongs. But for a while it seemed that I should remember my faults so as to avoid them in the future. However, without pretending to give a canonical reading on Scripture, it is interesting that Corinthians 13 does not say “love keeps no record of another person’s wrongs,” it simply says, “love keeps no record of wrongs.” I believe I was wrong to try to be so intentional about not making mistakes.
Oftentimes, intensely trying to avoid making a mistake causes more problems than it solves. At Hillsdale College we, the student body, love to be intentional about our relationships, our fitness patterns, our study habits—and these are all noble things. However, as with any human virtue, there is danger of excess and corruption. And intentionally meditating on our faults can both bring about negative effects and can originate in disordered motives. Attention is a limited thing. This is the case with our sight. When we focus on one thing it’s natural for the objects in the periphery to become less and less clear the farther we get from the center of our vision. Similarly, when we focus on an idea, there are other ideas in the background but they are less clear, and they are harder to remember. So when we focus on our mistakes, our real strengths become less clear, even though they are still there. So we are liable to forget ourselves. And forgetting ourselves we become insecure. When we become insecure, we tend to overcompensate by trying to perfect our own self-image, and so we not only waste more time on our appearance but we become more fixated on ourselves, perhaps the very thing we wished to avoid. Fixating on our problems often causes a spiral of self-reflection that gets us nowhere. However, such fixation can also come from a disordered sense of our ability to fix these problems. We perhaps lack faith in the love our friends have for us, and so we act out of despair instead of hope and we fail even more to love as we should.
So what is the solution? Instead of fixating on an exact formula by which we can perfect ourselves now, we should first submit to God’s mercy by asking His forgiveness, then to our friend’s mercy by asking their forgiveness. And then we should simply realize that improvement will be a process that takes time and focused effort. However, focused effort, the intentionality which we Hillsdalians love so much, must be exercised in the moment of temptation, not anticipated alone in our dorm rooms before the moment of temptation. All such efforts are what a mentor once lovingly described to me as, busy idiocy. Like Penelope in The Odyssey, we should remain circumspect; we should not allow our attention to fixate too much on one unpleasant memory of former mistakes, and instead we should move our attention to those around us, to the beauty around us, and to the goodness of the people in our lives.
In many ways, what I am referring to here is the simple gift of gratitude. And here we are reminded again of our Lord’s words to us, “do this in memory of me,” the prayers which accompany the consecration of the Eucharist—for “Eucharist” means gratitude. Much of what I have said has come also from my mother who used to remind her overly intentional sons not to lose their heads. “Remember to speak truth to yourself,” she would say when she could see that we had forgotten ourselves. I have still not realized just how good that advice is. “Truth” in Greek is “aleitheia” which literally means, “what is unforgotten.” So when we speak truth to ourselves, we remember who we are, who God is, who our friends are, and how we relate to each of them.
Children tend to struggle much less with thinking about themselves too much. If anything they are too forgetful of themselves and their surroundings. However, we should strive to be like them as we journey down into the dark forest of adulthood: we should simply live joyously in the world and not try too hard to perfect it or ourselves. And when we stumble, we should calmly and humbly practice remembrance of the truth and, like Paul, forgetfulness what lies behind so we can reach toward what is unforgotten, to the golden thread that binds us together in Beauty, to Truth and Goodness Himself.
Stephen Conner is a junior studying philosophy and classics.
Hillsdale Forum 