A friend of mine lost her father recently. And in the weeks since, she has asked me the same question, again and again, more than she ever did before.
If we chose this — if this loss was somehow part of a script we agreed to — why don’t we remember choosing it? Why does it just feel like something that happened to us, without warning?
I did not have an easy answer for her. I still do not, not really. But her question stayed with me, the way the hardest questions always do. And it is the same question, in different words, that my students.
Forgetting feels like a cruel trick. It feels as if you are being dropped into a maze without the map.
Forgetting is the whole point.
The Cost of Knowing the Ending
Think about what would happen if you remembered everything. If you knew every challenge, every loss, and every person who would hurt you ahead of time, you couldn’t truly live.
Not knowing is what makes the learning real.
A student who already has the answer sheet doesn’t learn anything from the test.
We forget so that our choices could actually matter. We forget so that when we show courage, it is coming from reaching out to that resource within us. We forget so that everything is seen from the lens of a new beginning.
The Joy of Remembering
Because we forget, every single moment of clarity is a beautiful surprise.
Have you ever had a moment where you suddenly felt like there is something much bigger going on? That isn’t you learning something brand new. That is you remembering something very old.
And because you found that feeling through the ups and downs of real life, that wisdom truly belongs to you. No one just handed it to you; you lived your way into it.
The Sacred Design
This is why healing takes time. This is why the journey is long. We can’t just be told who we are; we have to discover it for ourselves. We forget, we search, we find, and we forget again. Each time, we get a little closer to the truth.
We choose to forget so that we can enjoy the beautiful experience of remembering. And maybe that moment of remembering is exactly what we came here for.
This is the last post in this series. We began with the script we chose before we arrived. We moved through the mind that challenges us, the fragrance we have always carried, the body we are learning to inhabit, the villains who agreed to love us in the hardest way. And we end here — with the forgetting that made all of it necessary, and the remembering that makes all of it worthwhile.
Thank you for walking this with me.