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                           Memory

     Remembering and forgetting are complementary processes.
and require, if anything does, an Aristotelian golden mean.
We cannot live if we forget everything, but we can also not
live if we forget nothing.  We cannot live if we remember
nothing, but we can also not live if we remember everything.

     Remembering is my adaptation to the world.  What I
remember becomes part of me.  One may give to this process
(almost) a crude, neurological, physiological, mechanical
explanation.  That which I remember has changed, has altered
me.  When I forget, a burden is removed from my mind, a part
of my mind is lost, but the part that remains is less
encumbered.

     In a sense I am what I remember.  A man or a woman who
remembers too much is emotionally and intellectually obese.
A man or a woman who remembers too little is emotionally and
intellectually malnourished (unterernaehrt).  Spiritual
activity (geistige Taetigkeit) requires that I remember just
the right amount, not too much and not too little.

     Perhaps there is also a metabolism of memory, which
provides that new memories must be acquired and old memories
must be discarded, or in any event, refurbished.

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Copyright 2005, Ernst Jochen Meyer
