How to Forget?

It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see.--Henry David Thoreau

I need to learn a new skill.

A skill that can help me to be able to see things in a truer light. A light that casts a shadow of truth on objects, people and thoughts. I must learn how I can make space in my cluttered, unfocused mind and that restless spirit of mine that troubles and toys with it. I seem to be seeing many things in new perspective. Bright, new visions. As I am growing older, aging and evolving, the universe of my memories is growing crowded and confused.

I look around me and I am surrounded by so much that talks to me of what I have done in my life. There are the bookshelves filled with the volumes I have read. My favorite authors, collected and shelved for me to see, take down and turn to that certain passage that pleases. A snow goose mount from a special hunt with dear friends. Pictures and autographed baseballs and elephant bookends.

But perhaps I should begin to remove some of these things. Take the books I probably won't read again and donate them. Give away my drawings and art that lies flat and unviewed. Mostly forgotten things. Unused. Should be discarded. Simplify a bit more.

What I truly need to develop is not the ability to remember more, but the ability to forget. Give up certain ways and things. That would bring a peace to me and allow more joy to work it's magic on my life.

Gary Ryan Blair, "The GoalsGuy®", kind of sums up what I am contemplating when he wrote, "Learning is about more than simply acquiring new knowledge and insights; it is also crucial to unlearn old knowledge that has outlived its relevance. Thus, forgetting is probably at least as important as learning.”

Let the forgetting, begin.