[COLUMNIST] : 2023 in Review: Memory, Pain, and the Uncharted Territory

KUALA LUMPUR : So, another year has passed… and we choose to remember apposite events of 2023 and for most of us with short memories, forgetting the things that should stay in the past.

The good thing about short memories is that things remain forever fresh, new and thrilling. Life and the world are appended in an eternal child-like innocence. A seasoned journalist friend of mine once said to me, “Learning through experience breeds familiarity, which breeds contempt, which breeds ideology.” For that reason alone, it would seem better to leave the important stuff to instinct and the rest to apathy.

To put it more pertinently, only we can choose whether or not to remember. That we so often choose not to is partly homage too, instinctively knowing that there are some things in life which are best not to dwell too long, nor ponder too deeply.

Human beings are said not remember physical pain, for that would make life intolerable from birth itself, but even that is debatable. The trade-off for this mercy is that each time a bone is broken, a wound sustained or going through chemotherapy, the pain is as excruciatingly novel as it ever was.

As on the surface, so in its depths. We can also blank out emotional pain; burying it deep and silencing it. Modern psychology suggest that this is profoundly inimical to one’s mental health, but most of us from the older generation seem prepared to live in denial of that too, with depraved consequences.

Otherwise, what would we do but replay over and over in our minds the loss of a good friend and research partner, the crushing lives in the floods that hit the nation, predictable, at the same time every year, and the rising numbers of the dreaded COVID-19 patients, once again.

George Santayana, the Spanish philosopher was famously and repeatedly quoted for “those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it” may have fallen short. Those who remember seem equally condemned – for them, because the pass never departs, as we keep adding memories to them.

But it is well worth recalling Santayana’s oft-quoted line in its context, from his five volume 1905 work, The Life of Reason: “Not to be aware of the pain is to be forever a child, but those of us who forget the past are condemned to repeat it. Mankind is the sum of his ancestors.” This quotation is also apt when applied to the many scenarios in our country, and the world, sadly.

To be aware of that rich truth, alas, takes risks unleashing a hellishly Hellerian Catch-22: As we don’t remember, so we never learn. As we never learn, we never know. And what we never know, we can’t very well remember, can we?

No one knows what 2024 will bring, but one thing is sure, 2024 will offer its own novelty.

Life is fleeting as we have repeatedly seen in the painful scenes in Gaza, so make it count. Do what your heart desires and shoot for the stars. If it means leaving a job that seems like working with ‘Death Eaters’, so be it.

Don’t be afraid to start all over again. You might like your new story better

Happy New Year everyone!

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*Associate Professor Dr Roslina Abdul Latif is a communication expert and thought leader in higher education

** The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the position of Astro AWANI.