Of course you will remember that this time you want to give Mrs. Larkin three percent mepivacaine without a vasoconstrictor, and that the gingival hyperplasia you noticed last week on Tom Elfman could be related to his nifedipine regimen. You have no problem recalling, either, that you need to be done tonight before six so you can get to the school play on time. At least you’d better remember.

From the first time we gazed into our mothers’ eyes to the continuing education course we took last week, our lives are defined by the demands of memory. Memory, our ability to draw wisdom from experience, shapes and influences every aspect of our lives. Memory creates identity and animates our surroundings. Memory builds meaning. Our shared memories become culture. "The very essence of civilization consists of purposefully building monuments so as to not forget," I.S. Vygotsky wrote.

But we forget all the time.

Memory is not a documentary of the events we experience but an interpretation. Our memory for faces, facts, songs, events, pictures, smells, and skills seems both vast and mostly trustworthy. Yet research on memory affirms that we continually edit, distort, forget and recast the past as we create meaningful stories about ourselves. We filter and shade memory, enhancing some remembrances and blocking out others. "Just wait until now becomes then," Susan Sontag wrote slyly. "You’ll see how happy we were." Francois la Rouchefoucauld called attention to our inevitably selective memory more bluntly: "Everyone complains of his memory, and no one complains of his judgment."

We hate that we forget. "I just had it on the tip of my tongue," we say, apologizing in conversation. Forgetting is clumsy, frustrating, and frightening; it can ruin a date, or an exam, or a career. But at the same time forgetting is a crucial mental process. Ironically, we must forget in order to remember. Forgetting is clearly an important part of effective remembering. "If we remembered everything," the philosopher William James noted, "we should on most occasions be as ill off as if we remembered nothing. It would take as long for us to recall a space of time as it took the original time to elapse and we should never get ahead in our thinking."

The Russian psychologist Alexander Luria wrote about a man who remembered too much. The man could hold on to seemingly unlimited facts and mental pictures of people and places he had seen. He was deeply unhappy. His extraordinary memory for minute details of the past overwhelmed and interfered with his experience of the present.

So although our entire personal and professional lives are arranged around what we remember, or want to remember, I propose that we dedicate a modest slice of our energies to doing just the opposite. Forgetting is not always an embarrassment, an annoyance, or the onset of Alzheimer’s. It can be extremely beneficial. There are some things that we ought to actually try to forget. As dentists, for example, we would be better off forgetting at least three things: dogma, anger, and insularity.

Forget dogma. There are standards of care in dentistry, and a lot of current talk about formulating parameters and indicators. Certainly we must agree on thresholds of what constitutes acceptable care. But dentistry is not a religion. There has to be room for thoughtful experimentation for progress to occur. And there is usually room in a given treatment plan for several approaches.

Forget anger. It’s time to cool off. Anger must not distort our relationship with patients, who must not become enemies or fodder in third-party tugs of war. Nor should we allow anger to interfere with our relationship with colleagues, with whom camaraderie diminishes stress and improves communication and patient care. It’s time to put away anger for that certain dental school professor: you know who I mean. And it’s certainly time to shelve the anger for organized dentistry. This is a democracy, vibrant and messy, full of give and take. It will only improve if you make it improve. Which brings me to the next point—

Forget insularity. That’s isolation. Dentists are the sovereigns of solitude. So get out. Get involved in a good work in the community. Sign on for a project. Don’t just do the things you’re paid for. Volunteer somewhere. Go to work on a committee at the dental association.

As you struggle to remember everything in your busy schedule, leave a little space in the day planner for a small shift in your point of view. Don’t forget to forget. Your memory may not improve, but your memories will.

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