Robert Lynd is a humorous and delightful essayist. His essays are simple, playful and satirical. His style of writing is elegant and charming. In his essay “Forgetting” , he writes about the root causes of forgetting and also explains what items are usually forgotten by people.
Robert Lynd is amazed by the efficiency of human memory. Modem man remembers telephone numbers, names of film stars, cricketers, football champions and even notorious murderers. He remarks wittily that man does not forget a single item of his clothing; No one forgets to shut the door when leaving the house. The institution of family survives in modem cities because ordinary people have extraordinary memory power. In some matters the memory is less than perfect, causes could be psychological. We tend to forget things we don’t wish to remember.
For example, many people forget to take medicines. Medicine needs to be taken before / after meals. Robert Lynd remarks that chemists make a lot of money because people tend to forget to take medicines. It aggravates the disease and people are forced to buy more and more medicines. Most people forget to post letters. The author himself would not trust his letters to be posted by others. The author himself never remembered to post letters entrusted to him. He had to apologise for the unposted letters kept with him for long. Likewise, the author forgets his walking sticks often.
Absent – mindedness of people shocked the author when the Railway department published the list of lost articles. It was startling to note that young people forget bats, balls etc. The author attributes it to the abundant imagination and dreams. They are citizens of dreamland. Anglers also forget their fishing rods. Absent – mindedness is often a blessing in disguise. People can forget their unhappiness and live in a world of Utopia. Great thinkers, poets and philosophers are absent – minded because their minds are full of lofty ideas and imagination.
Socrates the philosopher and S.T. Coleridge the poet were absent – minded people. Similarly, Politicians have bad memories. States are yet to produce ideal Statesmen. Great writers, composers of music have amazingly great memories . Memory is half the substance of their art. Once a father took his baby out in a perambulator in the morning. He walked into a pub to have a glass of beer. The child was sitting in the perambulator outside in the street. After sometime, his wife came that way for shopping. She was shocked to find her baby sleeping in the perambulator.
She decided to teach her husband a lesson. She took the baby home. She expected her husband to come and apologize for losing the child. but he just walked in and casually asked his wife cheerfully what was there for the lunch. Very few people like Einstein or Socrates would be capable of such absentmindedness. Men should forget unpleasant things and remember pleasant things.
