Forget This Good Thing - a Case Study
A story about how an oracle can inform a relatively small decision.
The other day, a minor quandary had me going back and forth. It lingered in my peripheral vision, and I just couldn’t put it to bed.
Making these kinds of fifty-fifty decisions is one possible use for Forget This Good Thing. Here’s how I used it.
The decision
I had two essays. And I couldn’t choose which one to finish editing and publish next. The first is a thundering, eccentric and potentially controversial broadside about a century-old misstep of spirit and technology that poisons daily life. The other one is a humble personal essay about the ups and downs of trying to write for a living.
Which would it be? I opened the site:
I focused on the question for a few seconds, rolled it over in my mind.
Then I hit START.
The reading
One way of understanding an oracle is that it taps into the power of synchronicity to provide an answer where all else fails. Carl Jung came up with the idea of synchronicity while studying the I-Ching. He wrote a really difficult book on the subject, and the idea caught on. Essentially synchronicity is the idea that our immediate sensory experience is eerily alive and directly responsive to the most urgent topics of our conscious and unconscious minds.
My initial question about which essay to publish was, to me, essentially a question about whether to take a bigger or smaller risk. This is what I got.
The first aphorism in the reading speaks directly to risk, in the form of cards, losing at them. The second speaks to betrayal by a loved one, a city. The last one speaks to a condition in which my feelings may not have much to do with the reality of a situation.
On balance, these are voices for caution. From different angles, they plead the case for the less-risky option.
Every answer is a test
When approaching an oracle, it’s variables all the way down. And the user is a big, fat one. The answer isn’t just where you find it, but where you chase it. It’s not like looking something up in a book. You’re responsible, even if you never do find out just how much.
Here are a few variables from the night I consulted the oracle. One kid was asleep, and the other was watching a cooking show with my wife. I was nursing a post-work cocktail. I felt free of care for the first time all day.
In that exalted state, the oracle’s arguments for caution seemed cowardly and unworthy of me. Was my standoffish response, in fact, the real answer? Would I have another cocktail and wake up pleading for mercy at 6:15 the next morning? And would that be the answer? Find out Friday.
The whine of feedback
Of course, using Forget This Good Thing is different for me. I wrote the aphorisms. This gives them the faint whine of feedback for me, like a microphone at an amateur function. I also get the gist of the aphorisms much quicker.
I don’t get that feedback-like sensation when I use the I-Ching, written half a world and 3,000 years away. But it takes me more time to parse the language and apply the Not-Yet-Fording hexagram and to a decision about whether to write a new novel or try to pick up more freelance work.
One way to skin a mystery
The oracle function is just one, highly focused, way to use Forget this Good Thing. You can also use it to wander through a forest of language, humor, provocations and ideas, or just start it up and watch it go.
Arena
I plan to stick with the decision that I came away with from the oracle that night. Maybe it’ll another strategic misstep in my literary career
But something interesting has happened: The process of consulting the oracle - as ancient ritual as there is - has opened up an arena where deep thinking, free will and random chance could play on seemingly equal footing for a short while.
The process gave me an occasion to reach through what I thought my question was. My question wasn’t just is this prudent and wise? It was also do I even want to be prudent and wise? And if not, then what do I want?
Questions and gifts
This is what an oracle can offer - be it the I-Ching, old-fashioned bibliomancy, William Burroughs’ Cut-Up Machine, a flipped coin or Forget This Good Thing.
It can give you an extra minute to think, and to appreciate what a thing it is to decide what to do next. It can give you another minute to savor the moment before the decision is made. It can connect a mundane decision to what’s most important to you. It can remind you that nothing is decided, nothing set in stone, despite the way it looks.
Selected Bibliography
Forget This Good Thing – Try it now
Forget This Good Thing – The app for iPhone and iPad
Forget This Good Thing – Paper book 1 - Paper book 2
A good, sturdy version of the I-Ching
Forget This Good Thing – All About It
William Burroughs’ Cut-Up Machine
Forget This Good Thing - Its creation - What it can do for you - Why it matters - Thirteen descriptions