Memories

Wouldn’t it be nice if the computers in our brains had a “delete” button to erase unwanted memories? If I had a delete button I would be able to sleep a whole lot better. The longer the life, the more times the delete button would be used.

There are many kinds of memories I would erase. All the occasions when I screwed up and lost someone special would be gone in a New York minute; they are just reminders of how stupid I can be and how much better life could have been. (“Woulda, coulda, shoulda?”)

How about the memories of things you don’t and never will understand? I don’t know about others but the most frustrating things to me are those for which there seems to be no explanation; of course these always involve other people. How many times can you ponder and review something in your mind without ever coming to any conclusion - only so many. After a while such things are “accepted” and you promise yourself you won’t think about them anymore – but you do because the memory lingers on. Push delete and zap they are gone.

How many times do you replay in your mind events and interactions to consider alternate scenarios that might have been better for you? Deleting memories that cause you to push replay would go along way toward avoiding fruitless musings and further frustration.

It’s a nasty mind game to wonder about how things would have gone if you did something you should have or not have done something you did. Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to relive those moments to change the outcome? But you can’t, so with delete, the whole thing doesn’t exist and more unnecessary frustration is avoided along with sleepless nights.

Replacing bad thoughts with good ones is a good idea but seldom possible because to do that you have to push aside those pesky bad thoughts. If we could cut and paste it might work but the brain’s computer doesn’t operate on Windows.

Of course what we’re saying is that mental hurt is far worse than physical pain. The body can heal itself but the brain can’t.

Some painful memories are good though and should be kept. Pictures of man’s inhumanity to man need to remain in the computer. Remembering the atrocities of the Nazis and of Muslims are important because they remind you of the need for vigilance against those who would perpetrate such things if they come into positions of power and achieve the ability to repeat their inhumane behavior. If only more of us would recognize the slippery slope of allowing such people incremental advancing steps that inevitably lead to horrors. How silly of the world to condemn childish pranks or physically harmless practices during incarceration of enemies while avoiding speaking about real inhumanity like cutting off heads or stoning people.

Obama and his Joseph Goebbels running the news media have the right idea; control what people know and you control how people think about things. If the masses only conjure up memories of what you say and not what you do, you can get away with anything. There’s another use of that darn delete button if you had one. Delete the b--- s--- and you can clean up the slippery slope and make things go in the direction they should.

Do you think there is anyone is congress that would ”pledge their sacred honor” for the country like the men did in a hot and sticky court house in Philadelphia in 1776? (Do they have any sacred honor?) Hell, they can’t even fulfill their oath to protect and defend the constitution – most of them should be tried for perjury.

If I can’t have a delete button, I’ll settle for a toke, a glass of Kool-Aid and an on/off switch.