Memory is Overated

Chapter 91 of Emerson: the Mind on Fire is titled Memory. Here's some advice I could've used for much of the past 50 years. Ralph Waldo told his daughter


"You must finish a term and finish every day, and be done with it. For manners, and for wise living, it is a vice to remember."

and this


"This day for all that is good and fair. It is too dear with its hopes and invitations to waste a moment on the rotten yesterdays."


And the biographer, Richardson explains:

"He meant that one should not pick at the scabs of one's little mistakes, rudenesses, oversights, and failures."

I'm guilty of dwelling too much in the past and ruminating at length over past failures. My thanks to Emerson and Richardson for such a fine sermon aimed most appropriately at me.