subway

It was cool and drizzly when I left my apartment one morning last week, wearing my spring raincoat, but by mid-afternoon, it was sunny and warm.  At the end of the day, I walked out of the office, leaving my coat on the rack outside my office door.  I rode the crowded subway to my stop, dropped in at the grocery story to pick up a couple of things, and as I started to cross the street to my apartment, all of a sudden, I knew.

Lisa's coat

The keys to my apartment were not in my bag.  They were in the pocket of my raincoat, hanging on the coat rack outside my office door.

I know that moment so well, that mental click from forgetting to remembering.  It’s a cold, jarring sensation.  It’s the jolt that accompanies waking up in meditation or suddenly knowing the right word for the crossword puzzle.  In American Sign Language, it’s the popping up of the index finger in the sign for “understanding.”  I think it must be related to the burst of the sephirah chochmah, the flash of creative insight that wasn’t there a moment ago.

The stories that accompany remembering can vary.  It can be the exasperation and self-judgment that focuses on the forgetting.  (“I am such an idiot!  Now I have to get back on the subway, go all the way back to the office and then retrace my steps again!”)  Or it can be marveling at the mind’s ability to wake up, even when it used to be asleep.  (“How amazing that I remembered before I actually reached into my bag to find my keys!”)   It can even be compassion.  (“Our poor brains!  Think of all the things that bombard us day in and day out!  No wonder we forget so much.  How else would we survive?”)

For me, the small, inconvenient act of forgetting and remembering spurred me to consider:  what else have I forgotten?  Have I remembered to be grateful for owning a key and a raincoat, for having the physical strength to get back on the subway, for having an office and a job, for walking through the early evening light in New York City with the thousands of other people, each with their own hopes and disappointments and stories?

So much of spiritual practice is about remembering to remember.