A spring afternoon, I saw a sad and helpless question: “How do you forget someone?”
To forget someone, brain injury amnesia or psychological suppression after a big shock can make us forget someone. But in reality, we can’t do that.
One reply said: “Maybe this question should be changed to ‘How do you forget someone you like, but doesn’t like you.’” It’s true, if two people are in love and can be together, then why deliberately forget?
As long as our body and mind are fine, it’s hard to forget someone. Even if we don’t think about them for a while, seeing a similar back, a special scene, an unintentional action, or a word or a song can bring back memories.
Forgetting someone is impossible. What everyone wants to forget is the heartache when they think about that person.
No matter the reason, losing someone we care about always hurts. To make ourselves feel less pain, we hope we can forget.
Zhang Ailing once said: “There are only two ways to forget someone, one is time, the other is a new love.” So it can be understood that if you can’t forget, either time is not long enough, or the new love is not good enough.
But is that really the case? Why do we always feel stuck even when new people we meet are clearly better than the previous one, according to our friends and family?
This is because everyone is more likely to remember things they couldn’t finish. Broken relationships, departed lovers, are those unfulfilled pain points. The inability to forget someone is mostly due to the following reasons:
First, we put in all our effort but got no results, so we’re not willing to let go. How much we put into something or someone determines how much it means to us.
It’s like buying something. The more money we spend, the more valuable the item is.
If we spend a week making a model and it gets lost or damaged, we’ll feel heartbroken. If it only took a second, we won’t feel that way.
It’s the same with relationships. Because we care, we’re willing to invest time, energy, and money. We also have high hopes. The more we put in, the more we value the relationship, and this cycle continues.
But when we put in all our effort, put in a lot of effort, and still don’t get the results we want, we’ll feel like we “lost” and we’re not willing to let go. Why no results even after putting in so much?
Thinking about every wait, every expectation, the feeling of a broken dream will be amplified. This is one reason why we can’t forget someone.
The unwillingness to let go isn’t because of the other person, but because we feel we’ve done our best but didn’t get what we wanted, so we can’t forget.
Second, we always compare the past with the present.
We always tend to evaluate past events. They’re either good or bad, complete or regretful.
However, after time has passed, our views on many things will change and become biased. When we recall past events, we tend to magnify the good times and ignore the problems.
If we face the past in this way, it’s really hard to move on. Because we use filters to look at people around us, and we use filters to look at the past. In that case, the people we meet now will never be better than the one we’ve lost.
The regret of what we couldn’t get will amplify our feelings, making the past seem better, which in turn makes us ignore the good things in the present.
In fact, no one can be completely unaffected by the past. But the past should remain in the past. If we can’t let go, we’ll get stuck in the pain of the past, which will make the person in our memory seem better and better, and we’ll find it harder and harder to accept new people.
Third, the regret of not cherishing something.
There are no regrets in this world, but there are always people who regret.
“Once, there was a sincere love in front of me, but I didn’t cherish it. When I lost it, I regretted it. The most painful thing in the world is this. If God could give me a chance to do it all over again…”
The relationships we lost because we didn’t cherish them often cause pain and make it hard to forget. The reason is simple, we have countless “should haves” in our hearts. We should have cherished the relationship, we should have kept them, we should have been more caring.
It seems like it’s all because we didn’t do enough, so we couldn’t save it.
We can’t go back to the past, which is the saddest thing. A story that could have been beautiful ended in regret because we didn’t know how to cherish it. All the regrets stay in our hearts, naturally making us think about them all the time.
Fourth, missing someone completely because of external factors.
There’s another kind of helplessness in relationships, which comes from the outside world.
Although many people say to bravely pursue true love, reality is often crueler than our wishes.
Many love stories end with the man wanting to break up with his girlfriend to pursue true love, only to find out she’s pregnant… There are many times when it’s “a pity we didn’t meet when we were both single.” Meeting love doesn’t depend on the time, but when the timing is wrong, it’s sometimes hard to take that step.
“Can’t get it” and “already lost” are both hard to forget. Many people miss each other because of external factors, which can also lead to long-lasting regret.
In the end, not being able to forget someone is actually not being able to forget the person in our heart.
Many experiences tell us that there are ways to forget someone. For example, using the *Declutter* method can bring about changes quickly.
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Keep yourself busy, because when people are busy and tired, they won’t have time to overthink.
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Tell yourself it’s over and don’t have any illusions.
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Go out more, communicate with friends and family more, don’t isolate yourself.
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Listen to less sad songs,“Sad people don’t listen to slow songs.”
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Deal with and store related items, don’t look at their social media.
However, these are all external solutions. The real reason we can’t forget someone is because they live in our hearts. If we can face reality from our hearts, we can better help ourselves let go. Only by letting go can we forget the pain they brought.
According to the previous four reasons, we should think clearly about some things:
For those who put in all their effort but got no results, although it’s hard to let go, it only means that the timing wasn’t right, or our abilities and attractiveness weren’t enough. In other words, the other person may not have been right for us.
For those who think the past was better than the present, try not to compare the good things in the present with the good things in the past. Compare good things with good things, and bad things with bad things, that’s more meaningful.
For those who didn’t cherish the relationship and left with regret, remember that the past can’t be changed. So don’t let history repeat itself. Learn to cherish every moment, and you’ll have a future with less regret.
For those who missed each other because of external factors, think about whether you or the other person hesitated. Maybe you didn’t seize the opportunity because you weren’t confident enough. Also, learn to accept reality. After all, life can’t always go your way.
Only by looking at the past people and relationships with the right mindset can we truly let go and move on, welcoming better relationships and a more mature and happy self.
Persistence is not wrong, but *Declutter* is the wise choice. Maybe sometimes we only see the pain of letting go, and forget that if we don’t let go, we’ll lose even more. If we don’t let go of a broken relationship, we won’t find our true belonging… On the one-way street of life, let go of the distractions in our hearts, let go of the gains and losses of material things, and have a broad and clear mind, which will make life more fulfilling and life more relaxed.