“Learn to behave,” Sri Yukteswar admonished. I picture his stern countenance punctuating his words. Though he may never have also said “Learn to relax,” that would have been another key piece of advice, an unsung part of learning to behave. He might even have said it with a smile.

That last part is important for another reason, too. Relaxation helps a lot in our later years when proficiencies begin to pale or disappear altogether. If you have reached middle age, you have already started surrendering bits of your short-term memory to temporary oblivion, and within a couple of decades, more of that oblivion will no longer be temporary. It’s what happens. The machinery wears out. 

Long-term memory isn’t immune either. The farther away we are from when a memory was made, the blurrier or less certain it becomes. I have memories that my imagination may have partially manufactured – I suspect we all do – especially the ones of a talent or achievement, wistfully inflated in recollection. 

With gradual mental slippage, we are dealing with a condition that tests our self-image, patience and composure. Ya gotta love it or it hurts.

Speaking from personal experience, these lapses are sometimes an invitation to a peculiar stream of cerebral activity that is difficult to explain. Unrelated thoughts, randomly selected by my subconscious librarian, tumble into and through the movie being screened in my brain, leaving my objective critic to wonder what’s going on. The script seems out of control, as if invaded by one from some other movie that wasn’t on the bill.

If any of this sounds familiar, the trap to avoid is trying to make sense of the unannounced movie’s plot. It’s strange. So what? Let it be. Elderhood tends to include a slow loosening of our grip on our mind’s projections. Better to enjoy the mystery of it and its entertaining chimera.

The best way to oppose this occasional onset is without tension or mourning, focusing on what is before us, the countless marvels of life and the blessing of you being one of them, a pilgrim in the vast, amazing dream of it. 

More of our best memories will remain accessible that way too, whether accurate or wishful, and we will come to our flight from here in spirited readiness, assured that when we’ve moved on to wherever is next, all that we have been, unabridged, will be archived for our light body to file and carry forward in total remembrance. Regret nothing and the next movie will be even better than this one.