My whole life, I’ve wanted to record everything around me — the daily recess drama in my third-grade diary, my weekly schedule of outfits in my middle school journal, passing thoughts in my freshman year Notes app. The things I am trying to remember as I approach the end of my time in high school are different: all of the green in Marin, the golden light in the evenings, the view of Mount Tam from Redwood. Everything seems valuable, nothing too small or insignificant.

This urge to record and remember isn’t unique to me. There is a great emphasis placed on preserving the individual moment: buying souvenirs from vacation destinations, journaling so that we can recall how we felt and exactly when we felt it, taking photos at prom until we have one with each friend. With iMessage and iPhone cameras at our fingertips, it has never been easier to capture everything in the realm of importance. A life well recorded, it seems, is the life best lived. This urge to remember, though, can come at the expense of an authentic experience of the present.

For many, anticipation of the future can come as a detriment to their experience of the present. Krystine Batcho, professor of psychology at LeMoyne College, wrote about the phenomenon of “anticipatory nostalgia,” which can cause individuals to experience the present as the past.

“Paradoxically, the desire to hold on to the present might jeopardize full engagement in it. Envisioning the future can bring the sadness of missing the present prematurely and anxiety about what will come next,” Batcho said.

There is a part of me that wants to remember how I feel right now forever — the meaning behind every photo in my camera roll. That isn’t all bad; as Tim Wildschut, a professor of psychology at the University of Southampton, wrote, a desire to remember the current moment can reflect the value of the present.

“That early sense of loss is the recognition of the fact that what you are experiencing is very special and unique. Your brain thinks ahead at such a moment and knows that this is something that you will recall with great pleasure later on,” Wildschut said.

Remembering is part of leaving any place. A lot of growing up is remembering: keeping with us the best parts of where we have been.

However, an equally important part of growing up is allowing ourselves to forget. We should let our lives change around us. We should experience the individual moment for what it is, as something that can only be lived once. This time of our lives is fraught with the belief that every moment must be captured, cherished and infinitely valued. And somehow, it must also be lived in.

In fact, as scholar Lewis Hyde wrote in his book “A Primer for Forgetting,” remembering and forgetting go hand in hand.
“Only when [forgetting] operates in concert with memory can forgetting clear new ground without foreclosing the past,” Hyde said.

I don’t yet know what I will remember about Redwood. But, as I leave, I think that I have to let myself forget. Forget the minutiae, forget the color of the halls, forget the flood of students in the library during finals and the sticky heat in May. And I will trust that the things that matter most are the things we can never forget: the connections made in this squat yellow building and the versions of ourselves we will carry for a lifetime.