How to Let Go of Memories and Open Up the Future – 1

It’s Because of Memory That We’ve Been Able to Live

The living creature called a human has a side that can live precisely because it has memory.

For example, knowing that if you do such-and-such this way, it will turn out like that, would be shaky without memories based on experience.

As you walk through life, the reason you don’t end up saying, “I have no idea what to do or how. I can’t tell right from left,” is entirely thanks to the help of memory.

Think about it.

Why do you suppose you don’t end up saying things like “I don’t know how to ride an elevator,” “I don’t know how to use a kitchen knife or scissors,” “I don’t know how to walk,” “I don’t know how to talk,” “I don’t know how to ride a train,” “I don’t know what to do when I take a bath,” “I don’t know how to shop,” “I don’t know how to watch TV”?

It’s because, based on memory, you have the recognition that in this situation you do this, and in that situation you do that, right?

You could say that’s entirely thanks to memory.

In that way, it’s one side of the truth that there are things we can do precisely because we have memory, but just like the saying “too much is as bad as too little,” it’s also one side of the truth that when you’re too caught up in memory, you put a lid on the infinite possibilities within human beings and shut off your own bright future, making it impossible to open it up.

Real Examples of Shutting Off the Future with Memory

To know how much being too caught up in memory has shut off your own possibilities, it’s good to untangle it based on real examples from your own life.

For example, don’t you ever shrink back, thinking, “I feel hesitant to give that person my opinion,” for reasons like “that person always objects right away” or “they’re somehow hard to approach”?

That’s a common, everyday example from something like a workplace, but the very fact that such a movement of thought occurs is a movement of thought that comes from “being caught up in memory.”

If such a thought hadn’t come to mind, your idea might have been adopted and everyone might have become happier thanks to it. But in cases like that, because you were caught up in past memories and shrank back, you ruined a precious chance that could have created a brilliant future.

When you shrink back like that, somewhere in your heart, thoughts like “What if they object?” or “It’ll be a pain if they argue back” or “It’ll annoy me to be turned down flat” are at work: the animal instinct of self-preservation is stirring, trying to protect yourself so you won’t get hurt or have an unpleasant experience.

That is precisely the wasteful act of being caught up in memory and damaging your future.

When it comes to such things, one instance tells you everything about the creature called a human: people move in pretty much the same way, with behavior patterns based on their own habits of thought.

Unless you change that, no matter how much time passes, you’ll stay in a life that just goes round and round in the same place.

“Then what should I do?” you’re thinking, right?

It’s all right.

I’ll now tell you a way to open up the future without being hindered by memory, so take it as “so that’s how it is” and try applying it to your own life.

(To be continued)