CLEANLINESS IS IMPORTANT for a variety of reasons. It promotes good health. It provides order. It is certainly more attractive than slovenliness. We try to keep not only our homes and bodies clean, but our thoughts pure. No one wants to be accused of having a dirty mind. To keep our environment clean takes effort. We vacuum; we sweep; we dust; we wash & mop; we wipe away cobwebs. But beware that you don’t go overboard and eradicate the cobwebs and other coverlets in your mind, as they serve an important function. You want neither of the following two extremes. On the one hand, keep your mind clear enough to access some memories, but avoid a memory that is so antiseptic that it remembers too much. “To remember everything,” wrote Brian Friel, “is a form of madness.” Even worse would be the real-life case of Henry M. (my namesake). In a 1953 experiment, his memory was stolen from him during a highly controversial operation performed to cure his epilepsy. He lived afterwards in a permanent present, unable to connect a past moment with the next, incapable of retaining or recalling any physical or emotional experience. He was perpetually held in one moment. He was enshrouded with uncertainty, but still alive, and forced to continue his life, moving forward, yet always around him was a blank fog. Fortunately, because every moment of his life was a clean slate, he was not unhappy. But the point is, without memory, one has no life.
HenryM