How to discard thoughts

Why discard thoughts?

Have you ever tried to forget some memory? Why on earth you should? You may ask me. Unless you have PTSD (Post traumatic stress disorder) It is not only in movies, about veterans who flown home after war, that they try to lead a conventional life, sometimes even awful memories haunt us every day. We might carry the burden and the noise created by these thoughts to places where we shouldn't. I can give you an example.

The other day, when I was driving in the morning towards home, I saw a van was parked in front of the house. Almost obstructing the driveway. And obviously I could not bring my car to the shed without reversing several times, if the van was not moved. How annoying this is? You come home to face this, and the guy who owned the van did not move it. Instead, he started to teach me how to drive my own car into my own driveway like he owned the place. And My temper meter was skyrocketing, although it was a chilling morning, I felt my blood boiling. My composure no longer looked tranquil. Even the lazy cat of my neighbor would notice my red-hot ears. I honked angrily and asked the guy to move his van. Obviously, he did with a frown on his face like I was interrupting his whatever damn business in front of my house. And that was it. The incident took place only for one minute. Yet, it was now carved into my brain with deep emotion. I am ashamed of losing temper.

Parked Vehicles

As you can see, I have carried this bad memory for several days, now I have written about it and made it a little more permanent. I have done the opposite thing of forgetting this memory. I have given it a negative value (or positive one). When memories are enmeshed with emotions by values, they are difficult to forget. This seems to be the reason why bad memories torment us again and again. Is there a way around this problem?

How does our memory work? A simple framework.

Do you remember everything happened when you drove home today? No right? Our minds have the remarkable ability to sort out important stuff from ordinary stuff. Generally, this happens automatically. Only the things which are extremely positive and extremely negative are kept in mind. Positives because they bring us pleasure, and we need to repeat creating these memories. Negatives because they hurt physically and mentally and we need to avoid these. To avoid you need to remember. But the problem arises, when the memory itself starts to hurt us. More you try to forget; more you will suffer from it. Just like that stupid van driver who is happily sleeping while I write about him. Ridicules, right? Exactly my point.

You are not the center of the universe.

When I say you are not the center of the universe, this is both true and false. It is intelligence to live with two opposing ideas and be able to choose what is best for the situation. As an example, if you choose to believe you are the center of the universe, as it seems the universe would not exist unless there is an observer, then all that matter is what you think. In that case whatever happens to you would have a great significance, hence by definition is what matters. Good or bad we cannot get rid of the memories. But for a moment look at the universal point of view. You're just a tiny speck of a dust in a tiny speck of a dust, in the milky way. Have you seen an image of a supercluster? (large collections of galaxies). If you put into this perspective a random consciousness in the universe would not be able to find you no matter how much they tried. This is how much insignificant "We" are together as 8 billion people. (You can throw in some animal species to make the biomass bigger, heavier, yet it would not make up to any significance)

So, the best way to discard thought is to attack the significance of the thought. Negative or positive. It doesn't matter. When you consider the universal time scale. Or the perspective of other people. (Keeping in mind paradoxical nature of this argument). Now, if you have any other better alternative method, you can mention here. I wouldn't give much focus on distraction activities like physical exercise or going for a walk, or even meditation. As Even in these activities, what we are trying to do is give less value to the haunting memory.