on elephants

the internet is endlessly informative and entertaining. and sometimes, you find stuff that might be corny, but it strikes a chord with you.

so it is with this snippet and me:

"never forget the three kinds of people in your life. The three kinds are: 1. Those who helped you in difficult time. 2. Those who left you in difficult times. and 3. Those who put you in difficult times."

So, i'm guessing that while you are remembering these folk, you should be reciprocally good to those who helped you in difficult times. easy enough. but what exactly should you do with the other 2, besides be an elephant and not forget them? i'm wondering what else you do.

and while i'm wondering, i'm thinking: interestingly enough, i have more of a hatred for those (or the one) who left me in a difficult time than i have for anyone who put me in a difficult time. perhaps, because any difficult time that someone put me in, i partially put myself in. i consider my ownself as partly to blame for the difficult times.

but in the end, whether they or you or something random is the cause of the of your difficult time, people in your life (whether they are 1's or 3's) then make a choice for themselves to be a 1 or a 2.


so as i said, i have great disdain and hatred for "those" who left me in difficult times. the 2. because, that is the person who either took a look and disregarded that i was having a difficult time, or was so wrapped up in himself, that he didn't even regard taht i was having a difficult time. what i'm saying is that either way, he made a choice that i wasn't worth it. and he took off.

how do i not hate that?

so i'm thinking- despite what the little quote says, quite honestly it would be my most fervent hope to not be an elephant and to be able to forget that person right out of my mind forever.

i'd like to get rid of his memory altogether, forget that he ever existed in my life. i really would like "an eternal sunshine of the spotless mind."

and as it turns out, i guess that scientists are saying now that you can actually do this. in fact, there are two ways. here, read this:

"What they found is that if you want to get something unpleasant out of your memory, there are two ways to go about it. You can directly surpress the memory every time it emerges, or you can use substitution to overwrite it with something else.

Write the researchers:

One mechanism, direct suppression, disengages episodic retrieval through the systemic inhibition of hippocampal processing that originates from right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (PFC). The opposite mechanism, thought substitution, instead engages retrieval processes to occupy the limited focus of awareness with a substitute memory. It is mediated by interactions between left caudal and midventrolateral PFC that support the selective retrieval of substitutes in the context of prepotent, unwanted memories."

and the article i read goes on to say that people can be better at one method or the other. something tells me i'd be better at the substitution one. because- suppression hasn't worked so well for me. i've been trying it for years upon years. and somehow, it's like the elephant in the room thing for me. the more i try to forget, the less i can.

and keeping with our elephant theme, did you know that elephantitis is a disease that is characterized by the thickening of the skin and the underlying organs? underlying organs, such as your heart. so yeah. i can't just can't seem to thicken my skin enough for the first option of suppression.

so i need a substitution. a kind of replacement.
so the question is i guess, what do i use for a replacement? it has to be something really big. elephant big.