S=Stepping through...

This article from Discovery News relates some of the research being done on memory. Not surprisingly, research has found that moving from one space to another results in a loss of memory about what a person was doing or looking at in the previous room. I have thought about this article a lot since I first read it. What may seem like a vexing human challenge at first glance, might be an incredible boon for forgetting things all of us want to leave behind.

The research explains that even walking through a virtual door had this effect of clearing memory. It seems to me that a person could actively choose to use doorways as a way of clearing memory of unuseful things like ideas or events that have been fully processed and serve no good purpose but to hang out and drag a person back in to the muck. A person might be able to use an imagined doorway to leave behind what no longer serves them.

An end of a year could also be an important symbolic doorway. What if we chose to leave some things on the other side as we walk through that door? Each new day could be a doorway. An opportunity to glean the important lessons from the day and then walk through to a brand new one.