Soulworms: A Meditation on Computers, Commercial Jingles, and Forgiveness

My computer is obsessed. Or possessed. Or possibly both.

Granted that I have a troubled relationship with the microchip, I really can’t see where this one’s my fault. I followed instructions and chaos ensued. Well, not exactly chaos, I suppose. If chaos is the lack of all order, then what I have is the Antichaos, order gone berserk.

It has to do with my delete button. A few months back our tech guy told me to go through a series of steps designed to sync my online calendar with my email. This simple action, he assured me, would confer many wondrous benefits. The two programs would harmonize, the planets would align, dogs and cats would settle their ancient feud and the OxyChem guy would be struck mute. So I control-alt-deleted my way through the instructions and did, in fact, notice one immediate change: my email delete function attempted to swallow two long-past events from my calendar and they got wedged in its throat. As a result, every time I go to clean out the trash folder I find these same two items - now over two years old - appearing multiple times. My computer obsessively deletes them, unable to make them go away for good. I clear the folder, wait a few minutes, go back in, and there they are all over again.

When this happens in humans, psychologists call it an “earworm,” a term first coined in German (Ohwurm) in the 1980’s. Neurologist Oliver Sacks, in his book Musicophilia, prefers the term “brainworm.” Call it what you will, we’ve all had the experience - a fragment of music, usually inane and irritating, overrides our conscious control and loops itself onto the mental intercom like muzak in an elevator. So my computer has a hard drive worm. (And now I have the theme from Gilligan’s Island to deal with for the rest of the day!)

I don’t know about anybody else, but this works for me as a good metaphor for forgiving. To be more specific, it works as a good metaphor for NOT forgiving. You know what I’m talking about. Someone hurts you, attacks you, speaks harshly or acts insensitively or fails to fulfill a promise. “I forgive him,” you tell yourself. “I forgive you,” you tell him. “I forgive him,” you tell God. You hit “delete.” You stop singing the song of he-done-me-wrong.

Then you turn your back for just one second, move on to other things, and before you realize it, there it is again: your soul’s delete file piled full of that same injustice. You stand in church trying to sing “Amazing Grace” but you can’t because the transcript of that misdeed is lodged in your head - set to the tune of the theme from “Family Guy.”

Mark Twain once wrote a hilarious short story called “Punch, Brothers, Punch!” in which the narrator finds himself overwhelmed with the mnemonic rap of a ticket-taker on the local tram line:

Conductor, when you receive a fare,
Punch in the presence of the passenjare!
A blue trip slip for an eight-cent fare,
A buff trip slip for a six-cent fare,
A pink trip slip for a three-cent fare,
Punch in the presence of the passenjare!
Punch, brothers! punch with care!
Punch in the presence of the passenjare!

He finally delivers himself by repeating his demon mantra to the local minister who absorbs the disease only to unburden himself by infecting his congregation. We sometimes attempt to deal with soulworms in the same fashion - by repeating them to others. Ministers, as Twain’s story notes, are particularly good targets. This technique, however, doesn’t work. Unforgiveness is like swine flu: we can pass it on to others while remaining sick ourselves. The original anger goes pandemic. I’ve seen it infect entire congregations.

C. S. Lewis once wrote to a friend that

only a few weeks ago I realised suddenly that I at last had forgiven the cruel schoolmaster who so darkened my childhood. I’d been trying to do it for years; and like you, each time I thought I’d done it, I found, after a week or so it all had to be attempted over again. But this time I feel sure it is the real thing. and (like learning to swim or to ride a bicycle) the moment it does happen it seems so easy and you wonder why on earth you didn’t do it years ago.

I suppose that’s the answer: just keep on forgiving. Maybe Jesus said what he did about “seventy times seven,” not because our brother would sin against us that many times, but because it would take that many deliberate acts before we could forgive the single sin that started it all. One nice thing about learning to forgive, I suppose: we’ll never lack for opportunities.

(”. . .the millionaire, and his wife. The movie star. The professor and Mary Anne. . .”)

This entry was posted on June 18, 2009 at 12:30 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.