How Associations Wear Out

Years later, after she'd moved away, I liked to walk down the same street and be reminded of meeting her at her door, of walking to school with her. After a while, though, I began to notice that I wasn't being reminded as well as I had been. That was when I first realized that associations wear out with use.

They wear out with time as well, of course, but for me, at least, use is a far more important factor than time. The way I figure it, to use an association, you have to see the object of association; when you see it, you can't help creating new associations; and then the new associations dominate or displace the old. Now, for example, when I walk down the same street, I'm mostly reminded of walking down the same street.

I've said that when I use an association, it wears out. Is it useful to apply the principle Don't Fight Your Mind to that fact? I don't think so. I guess if I wanted to forget something, I could go about overwriting all the associations that point to it, but that's about it.

In any case, the converse, that when I don't use an association, it doesn't wear out (much), strikes me as much more useful. If I leave a place, and don't go back, then the next time I see it I can expect that the associations will all be fresh, that I'll reminded of things from the past. Perhaps that's what gives me the illusion that time doesn't pass when I'm absent.

Can it be an accident that newlywed couples travel to distant places, places they'll probably never see again?