La Voz de Galicia – July 12, 2024 →
I’ve spent the past few days looking for some important papers at my mother’s house. These are the kinds of papers we shouldn’t lose: deeds, certificates, documentation, and for some reason, I can’t seem to find them. Things like this happen, I think, and I suppose that if they don’t turn up, there are ways to get copies, but I’ve set my mind on finding them. And in this process of searching and re-searching, I found things I wasn’t looking for, things I didn’t want to see, and things that made me reflect even more on the paths of life. I also found memories I had forgotten, and that were better off left in oblivion.
And somehow, in this process, I felt fortunate, as I have always had a bad memory, and forgetting moments from the past (good and bad) is a natural process for me. I know that sometimes it’s necessary to remember, and especially not to forget, particularly when forgetting is institutionalized. But on a personal level, I think having a bad memory is a quality I hadn’t been able to appreciate until now. Suddenly, I felt good about being able to let things go, even if it’s not on purpose, and I wondered what the secret was to burying these memories so unconsciously. But in that second process, I began to think about them, and then I had to stop what I was doing to see if I could forget them again.
How complex memory is and the way it manifests itself… In the end, I didn’t find what I was looking for, but I found things I wasn’t looking for, and in them, I realized that by looking forward (instead of backward) one can at least imagine the hope of continuing to build experiences, which I will probably also forget, but that anchor me to the present, with the remembrance of what I’ve lived, without the weight of memory.
