The Weight of the World
Writing Challenge 2024
Posted by Chris Sissons on Apr 3, 2024
Writing Challenge ยป Chris Sissons
Let’s think about remembering! We use many tools to assist with memory, and you can see one of mine in the photo. (If you can’t see the link with today’s theme, shrug your shoulders and move on.)
Whatever devices we use, they are best understood as means not to remember but to forget. Let me illustrate with the humble shopping list.
There you are preparing your famous spaghetti with tomato sauce. You chop your tomatoes and slide them into the pan. Then you think, I’m out of tomatoes – best add them to the shopping list. You trot or sashay across your kitchen, according to whatever’s playing on the radio, and scrawl “Toms” on your shopping list.
Then forget all about them. You do not sit bolt upright in bed at 2am, thinking I’m glad I added them to the list. You can retire safely knowing that the list will still be there in the morning unless you have children … a cat … or a spouse …
But you get my drift. You know that on the great shopping day, you’ll see the word “Toms” and remember that wonder spaghetti dish and your desire to make another. That is so long as you remember to bring the list … Whenever you see someone silently weeping in the supermarket, don’t interrupt them, they’re trying to remember.
There are many other means to forget – diaries, books in general, notebooks, cardex, - but not the Internet, which keeps reminding you of tedious things you don’t remember recording several years ago.
But what about the things I want to remember? You record them as stories and work on them. Tell and retell and of course sometimes record and publish them.
The rucksack is another means to forget. Load it with all the stuff you might need and so whenever you hoist it onto your shoulders, you can step out into the world with light feet, confident that whatever might befall you in byways of your world, you will have on your person exactly what you need to fix or enhance it! You carry on your shoulders the weight of the world’s healing!
This is Day 6 of Writing Challenge 2024. People all over the world take part in the WC. We write something every weekday for 4 weeks based on a prompt This year, I'll be sharing 21 articles based loosely on prompts about parts of the body. Do we fully appreciate the role things and stuff play in our lives? Each part of the body has certain things and stuff associated with it. (Probably!) I've no idea where this will go but hope you enjoy the journey. The introductory post was Things and Stuff. The last post was The Mark of the Beast and the next is Maps.
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