I had a thought, a thought of the satisfaction that would come with an endless memory. A power that allowed me to take in every little thing that I was once told, taught, or experienced which would allow me to have a continuous cycle of gains. I would be able to recall all the events of history, I would be able to continue to use my memory as a faculty of myself, where I could have a tool that seemed to be endless. I would possess this thing, this technique of memorization. I believed this; that memory of this sort would be a faculty of my intelligence till I came to the realization (thank you Hans-Georg Gadamer) that this is not what I would like to gain.

We, humans, need to come to this same realization - that memory is not giving us the power in which we are wanting to possess, but forgetting is giving us much more. The freedom to be able to forget the things we choose to and to recall those things that we believe mean something, the things that are truly significant to us, allow us to be the ones that we are. We are people composed of both our memories and experiences. Our memories are the components that allow us to recall those opinions that we stand up for. They build the bones of the ones who share their opinions. They create the heart that allows us to fight back against the hands that are eager to destroy our long production of ideas.

We; our brains, minds and memories, have the capability to forget - the true talent that many of us have been seeking. With the ability to forget allows room for an “entire renewal”(Gadamer), a state at which we are vulnerable to the unknown. A vulnerability that is taken over by a slight touch or movement, where we are ready to learn and create. This state allows us to make room for the opinions that stray far from what we have previously accepted. We need this. We need become comfortable being bare. To become truly susceptible to the harsh words and remarkable achievements. Here, we may finally look at the world with a new set of eyes. A place that allows ourselves to accept what was once denied.

We allow our guard down to be able to truly be content, at home, with that something that was truly peculiar. As we come around to this idea we begin to accept the new, an important factor we soon will see. But more important than coming around to the foreign idea is coming back to ourselves. We come back to a self that is changed, changed in the light of the new. We have allowed ourselves, to let down our guard, forget a few things and an open the space up to the once absurd.

We have become universal with the acceptance of a memory of “free mobility”(Gadamer). Universality allows us to be accepting, accepting to the fact that we are not the only ones who hold this personal state of memory. We all share this, we share the fact that we have this essential element (Gadamer), where we need to recall that our memory does not stand as the element that holds onto the next historical date or the equation for the pythagorean-theorem but it stands as our voice, as our opinions, as our rights, as ourselves. Memory is what creates us, it is essential for all to realize the similarities and differences between ourselves to allow our memory to function and grow.