To Forget and to Sleep

to forget and to sleep:

"...well, no, that's not the point. i'm not theorizing or speculating or whatever you call it just for the sake of thinking a lot. there is a purpose to it. i want some answers. really, like how did i get here? why am i on earth? what happened before and so on."

"right, don't get so worked up. i wasn't attacking your opinion. it's just that some would say, you know, here's a guy that could better spend his time thinking about more practical things, things that you can verify, be sure of..."

"i know, i know. and that has its place. i'm not knocking that. it has its value. but don't you think there's a mystery here? this a pretty vaguely discussed topic but there must be a lot of people interested. when i was young, i mean, i had all these questions but then, you know, life got busier and they faded into the background but now i'm older they're back. you want to know what i think? and i don't mean to force my ideas on to you but i'm pretty sure about a few things."

"go right ahead. and i'm not saying i agree with what i said. i'm just communicating an opinion from somewhere or someone else."

"ok, we'll get your true opinion later. no, so i've been thinking a lot about what i'm thinking while i'm thinking, if that makes sense, becoming more aware of how my thoughts drift, kind of keeping track of what's going on inside my head."

"right. being aware of your thoughts."

"yes. so there are a couple of things i've noticed. one, you can forget something you were thinking about within two seconds. it's really that fast. you know, so, normally you may think you have a pretty sharp memory, that you remember most things, right? wrong. you can forget something instantly, especially when you're thinking fast. i mean, i know, sometimes you can recover that thought if you dig a little, right, sometimes you can get it back."

"yes, it's amazing when that happens. but i never thought i had a very sharp memory."

"and the second thing is, when you're falling asleep, there is an incredible onset of these random thoughts from the subconscious. it's as if they're from an alternative life where the rules and baseline assumptions about your world are slightly different. and in a dream, there is always a concept to it. say, for example, i'm dreaming about being back at school. ok, i'm not actually seeing that much, but i know it's at school, exams are on, i'm obviously going to fail because i don't remember the subject material anymore and so on. and the dreams are so powerful they wipe out whatever our regular daytime awake thoughts are. you know, so i can see that if life on earth begins in a dream which you wake up from actually being on earth, i can see how you might have amnesia about what your life previously was."

"and it's easy to forget anyway, right? so the argument we might make that we generally have a good memory is perhaps not so true?"

"we remember a few things very well and a few more things pretty well but which only disguises the fact that a lot of these things slip right past us."

"well i don't think you're wasting your time. i mean, it's definitely not something that anyone could say they have absolutely no interest in. it's something that concerns everyone on earth, where they come from, how did they get here... i don't know. i guess it's a different focus. and it's like the brain can only focus on a few things at a time, right? that's why we forget too, i guess, come to think of it."

"yeah. do you remember exactly what you were thinking ten seconds ago?"

CLEARCHARGE