As we move into a new COVID phase, memories will fade with the passage of time and the constraints of how much our brain can hold, but experts say it’s more than that.
Forgive and forget: two words, often combined into one piece of advice despite seeming contradictory. “Forgiveness involves the emotional reappraisal of the memory of a past wrongdoing,” said Felipe De Brigard, a Duke neuroscientist and associate professor of philosophy. “When you forgive someone for a wrongdoing, you don’t forget the event. But once you forgive, the memory doesn’t hurt as much.”
Christine Webber
Are days passing you by and you re getting nothing done?
- Credit: Getty Images/iStockphoto
You don’t need me to tell you that this has been a most peculiar time. But it occurs to me that one of the weirdest aspects of the pandemic is actually about ‘time’ itself.
Where has it gone? How do we keep track of it? Does the average day seem longer than before Covid-19? Or shorter? Why do the last ten months feel as if they have been going on forever, and yet Christmas seems like a couple of days ago? It’s confusing.
Migrants rest at La Roca, or The Rock shelter in Nogales, Sonora state, Mexico, near the border fence that separates Mexico from the US [File: AP/Moises Castillo]
In March, I ended up stuck in the southern Mexican coastal village of Zipolite on account of the pandemic – an abrupt change of pace from the past 17 years, which I had spent darting schizophrenically between countries. There was no official lockdown or curfew in Zipolite, but checkpoints were installed on either side of the village to restrict access and departures.
In a split second, then, my daily routine changed from one of being constantly on the road to one of lying in a hammock watching ants parade across my stomach and thinking of all the things I could be doing were I not lying in a hammock.