Musings from the Ozone

Obsolete Learning

Bits and pieces of me rest in my computer. When I run a registry cleaner program on my hard drive, I am amazed at the stuff in my computer that is given a name such as ‘orphan file,’ or an ‘obsolete’ file.  It is a good thing no one has tried to organize my thoughts and clean them out for me because that is a job I have to do for myself.  Let me explain why I feel that way.  First, I should say, that I have a lot of thoughts that could be called ‘orphan’ thoughts or ‘obsolete’ thoughts, and while they do not rest on my computer, they are resting in my computer-like brain.

After raising 4 children, I realize that much of what I used to think on a daily basis is obsolete to me now. I had to know how to treat colic when my first child kept me awake crying for half of the night. I had to learn the difference between a cold, an allergy or an asthma attack in children. Bus schedules, lunch schedules, sales on kids shoes, vaccinations, dentist appointments, knowing the friends my kids played with and all such now-irrelevant and extraneous knowledge could be swept from my mind, if I had a ‘brain cleaner.’

Why do we hang on to thoughts that are so outdated and unnecessary to our lives today, until our thought processes are burdened with either anxiety or fear? It is one consolation to me that I do not have horrible flashbacks of a tortured childhood; painful memories that make many people suffer, do not plague me. I never heard of many perversions of the human nature until I was an adult. I had never suffered any trauma; in fact, my childhood was, compared to many other individuals, a picture of bliss and peace. I am grateful that I do not have to wade through that kind of obsolete junk.

However, there are plenty of pieces of unnecessary bits of knowledge that I need to discard from my thinking. Notice, I said knowledge, and not wisdom. I do not wish to part from any wisdom that I might have accumulated through the years. The obsolete and junky kinds of knowledge that I do not need in my mind are the kind of thoughts that really gum up the works. They are the rehearsals of bad experiences and they are actually of an insidious and dangerous nature because they do get in the way of the thoughts of good things. Why should I continue to remember that Sister so-and-so hurt my feelings so many years ago? I do not need to remember that I missed an opportunity to finish college before I got married. I do not need to beat myself over any mistakes I may have made in raising those 4 children. How long we suffer for guilt is really between us and God. Did we ask forgiveness for our blunders? Is God a forgiving God? Then, if we prayed and asked God for forgiveness 20 years ago, why would we need to continue berating ourselves today for those mistakes?

Having a personal walk with God gives us a lot of advantages! In the past decade, we were given a lot of free software when we bought a computer. Of course, now days, nothing is quite so free with computer/software. With God, there are so many benefits and freebies, until one has to wonder why anyone would hold God out of their life! His one amazing piece of ‘software’ is forgiveness. When God forgives, he forgets. We need to try to do that, too! If we practice forgiveness, in time, our computer- like brains will not recall past hurts, insults or aggravations with people and events. We will be given a clean ‘registry.’ That means freedom from the obsolete and orphan thoughts that have no real purpose for our lives.