Out of sight, out of mind

I didn’t quite understand it at first when I heard this phrase and that was after I started working for more than 10 years. Someone at work first mentioned it and I was scratching my head wondering what she meant. At that time, she was referring to people who has left the team. How is it that when something or someone is out of sight, it will be out of mind? Do we not still think about them along the way, one time or another? Memories perhaps?

And then, I started to understand when my team members were let go, one after another, in the last couple of years. Business was not doing well and the only logical decision that the company could take was to reduce budget, reduce expenses, which means manpower. They pretty much reduced anything and everything.

My team was close knitted back then, including the different teams before as I changed roles in the company. Most of us worked together for years. We went through issues after issues, meetings after meetings, overtimes after overtimes together. We ate, we laughed, we partied and sometimes, we even cried together. We lament on issues, we bitched about the work that we needed to do and how ridiculous some of them were. We laughed when we get happy moments together. We would each buy food, sit around and share them together. Food did taste better when shared.

But when one by one, my team members were let go; I realized how brittle and weak this connection was. The moment they left, the moment they were out of sight, they were pretty much out of my mind too. As close as we were back then, at work, the moment we do not see one another, we couldn’t care much less about one another. Even when we do see each other once in a blue moon or contacted each other, the feeling was different. Interesting how it came to that point. When we were seeing each other almost every working day, I was sure that we cared for one another. 

Then, I started thinking about school, college, the different people I worked with throughout my life. It is the same really. During school days, my so called best friends forever or back then, we would refer it as bffs, all of whom I have lost touch with. We kept in touch for a bit when we changed school or moved on to college or started working, but after a while, everything disappears once we each go our way into different paths. But all whom I was really close with back then, only a handful of us continued our friendships. But even so, it wasn’t the same as when we were doing things together.

The same goes with other things too. If for example, when I drive my car everyday, I would wipe and wash when I see dirt. But now with the frequent lockdowns, I hardly see my car except to start it up once every week or two weeks. Out of sight, out of mind. Or if I do not go into a room for a long time, I would have forgotten the state of it and how much it needed to be organized or wiped because of the dust that has built up over the weeks and months. Even with writing platforms like these, if you do not make time for it to check everyday or be notified about it, when it is out of sight, they will be out of mind and we would forget about them.

Unless something or someone means a lot to us, and unless we make the effort to keep in touch, to see them, to call them, to do something about it that keeps them in our minds, the moment they are out of sight, they are pretty much out of mind.