We fear to forget.

We all come to a point in our lives when we want to let go. We want to remove from our future what dragged us down in our past, or to simply start again. Occasionally, life forces us to this point as it's gentle push forward toward a clearer perspective. We are reminded that we are no longer defined by who we once were, our past, but rather who we have become.

As part of my personal attempt to achieve this, I tried to delete a lot of my online accounts today. Keyword being "tried." But it's true what they say about the world wide web, once we commit, seems like we're bound for life. I struggled to delete everything. Firstly, the process of deleting all the interlinked accounts is extremely complex. Secondly, it takes so much effort to comb through years of online media to completely remove yourself from the web and finally, and most thought-provokingly, because it is a struggle to let go of our past. 

To erase everything would mean erasing collections compiled over years; whether its photos and friends on facebook, music and videos on youtube or pages and pages of unread emails. It's our history.  We pile up albums and journals, so that we can look back at what we feared we would one day forget. 

The fate of all memories is to lay in our mind untainted and pure for a moment, later they morph in their natural struggle against time and eventually they fade into a blur. We must all admit that we can't remember every single day of our lives, we can't even remember the days which we once thought we'd never forget. Birthdays, weddings and loved ones; their significance caged inside a photograph, their importance restrained by the greatest limitation that is a paragraph. It's all because we fear to forget. 

Our fear manifests in albums and journals that remind us of the people and places in our past. It reminds us of childhood homes, fresh faced parents, before their stresses and worries started to show, proud grandparents for whom we were the result of their life's work. It reminds us of our teddy bears, wondering why they couldn't talk back, of learning to colour between the lines, striving intellectually and igniting a fire emotionally, uncontrolled and untamed passions. We remember sketching to release a feeling or expressing a thought in a tune. Our documents further remind us of ourselves as children; from an age of innocence to an age of manipulation and further on to an age of change.

In their moment, each of these memories served their purpose. Now they are a collection of experiences compiled to create the individual. They are the fingerprints on our clay, proof of a meddling hand fashioning us ever so subtly into the person we have become.

In our journey of self-discovery, these photos and moth-eaten memories are the only explanations we have for who we are now. We want our experiences to help us understand our reactions. These documents are our notes for what life has taught us. Society pens the textbook we use for our life, our parents give us their lessons, when we let them, and we try put all of these resources together to make our own set of notes.

We learn through experience. We study the memories. 

But have we truly learnt anything if we keep referring to our notes for all our answers?

Nothing can be bought into our final exam except our values, our beliefs, our minds and our hearts. Non-programmable calculators may be allowed and english translation dictionaries, all other equipment will be considered a breach of the rules. We're not allowed to talk to the person next to us, not allowed to have any communication whatsoever, collusion is not possible because we all experience differently. To each of us, even the same situation may be interpreted individually.

So we search. We search inside our heads for the answers and when it's not there, we make it up. 

We trust that the impression each moment has had and the perspective each person has shown us, is strong enough to shape us into who we are meant to become.

Take a step forward without all the burdens from the past; without the labels and the judgements, without your eyes clouded with tears, without your heart stuttering with fear. Take a step forward; weightless, strong and steady.

You are now, who you were meant to become.

-evieroo