Kingdom of Knuffel

From The Book of Questions by Gregory Stock.

Question #4:

"If you could spend one year in perfect happiness but afterward would remember nothing of the experience would you do so? If not, why not?"

I think the year of happiness would be outweighed by the later years of anxiety and uneasiness about what *really* happened during a whole year of missing memories.

Think about that... you wake up this morning and something seems OFF, and you find out that a whole year has passed, and you have no memories of any of it. It's just a blank.

How terrifying would that be?

Sure, sure, someone might say to you, "Oh, you seemed perfectly happy! I don't think anything was wrong!" but wouldn't that just make you MORE nervous? Almost afraid to be happy ever again, because what if it meant that memory would leave you, too?

That's exactly what I think. Happiness is so subjective. How would I even know for sure that the year was spent in my opinion of happiness? And what about the people who contributed to my happiness during that year? Would they still be round after? Or would they magically disappear because the year was over? And if I don't remember it, it's really like it didn't even happen for me and I just woke up one day being a year older.

Yes, precisely!

Not to mention you've essentially just lost a whole year of life. You could ask them what was going on with them, but you'd be missing a whole year of shared experiences with your friends and family. Everyone would suddenly be a year older (you, too) and you'd have missed all of it. AND they wouldn't REALIZE you'd missed it, so they won't fill you in, because as far as they know you were there for all of it.... you just wouldn't remember.....