Is It Better to Forget? // Emmett Bryant

 The final lines of William Wordsworth's poem "Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey" really resonated with me. In these lines he writes, "If I should be where I no more can hear / Thy voice, nor catch from thy wild eyes these gleams / Of past existence--wilt thou then forget / That on the banks of this delightful stream / We stood together; and that I, so long / A worshipper of Nature, hither came / Unwearied in that service" (lines 150-156). Wordsworth then goes on to explain that he would rather that person remember the nature and the beauty that surrounded them rather than remembering him. Wordsworth is striking the essence of what it means to know longer be able to be with someone that you had so longed adored. If you are no longer able to see that person, would it be better to forget them or try to let their memory live on in your mind? As easy as Wordsworth makes it sound to forget someone you cared for for so long, we all know that life does not seem to work out that way. No matter how hard we try to forget those people we were close with that are no longer with us they still seem to persist in our memory and haunt us. I think the point Wordsworth was trying to make was that it would be so much better to forget someone we have lost along life's journey rather than experience the heartache and wanting that accompanies their absence. And I have to say, I think I agree with him. 

I commented on Emily Otts and Song Whittington's posts. 

Comments

  1. Haylee LyndOctober 18, 2021 at 10:44 PM

    I definitely would agree with him. Forgetting someone is less painful. It is why we often distance ourselves and make strangers out of those who we used to love that have hurt us.

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  2. Emily ThullesenOctober 18, 2021 at 11:55 PM

    Your post is great! This is definitely an emotionally strenuous truth about life. Forgetting people is impossible because we often live on with only the negative memories in our minds along with the potential of “what could have been.” While it’s great to remember and learn from the past, the past definitely haunts us in unimaginable ways.

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  3. Braylan StringfellowOctober 19, 2021 at 8:56 AM

    I agree to an extent about forgetting someone you lost. I don’t think that we need to completely forget about their existence but instead we need to just move on and not get caught in a state of depression that they are gone. In a hypothetical sense I think it might would be best to just forget about that person entirely but that is just not possible in reality.

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