secondary response
after vaccination or infection, the immune system mounts a response to the foreign antigen present in the body. this response leads to destruction of the foreign agent, killing any of the body's own cells that have been infected with it and producing memory cells which retain information about the specific antigen. these memory cells, when they encounter the same antigen, amount a secondary immune response which is more rapid and effective. the increased secondary response indicates the presence of immunological memory and is responsible for immunity to certain pathogens. this immunological memory, however, rarely lasts a lifetime and often immunity wear off unless a "booster" is given to stimulate it.
I think my "immunity" to people follows similar patterns. whenever I have a bad falling out with someone and throw them out of my life, it is easy to resist letting them back into it while the memory of the offense is still fresh in my mind. but the more time passes, the more this "immunity" weakens. if enough time is allowed to pass, the offense is all but forgotten and I look back wistfully at the good things I shared with that person, which in turn makes me feel like I should seek them out, reconcile. for even if I remember what led me to drive them out of my life, at a much later time it becomes abstracted and distant, something I understand conceptually but which no longer carries the emotional weight it once held. as this emotional memory fades and the "immunity" weakens, I am left more vulnerable, open to subsequent "reinfection."
“My anger, in consequence of the damned laws of consciousness, is subject to chemical decomposition. As you look, its object vanishes into thin air, its reasons evaporate, the offender is nowhere to be found, the affront ceases to be an offense and becomes destiny, something like a toothache, for which nobody is to blame, and consequently there remains only the same outcome, which is banging one’s head as hard as one can against the stone wall.”
--Dostoyevsky, Notes from the Underground
I think my "immunity" to people follows similar patterns. whenever I have a bad falling out with someone and throw them out of my life, it is easy to resist letting them back into it while the memory of the offense is still fresh in my mind. but the more time passes, the more this "immunity" weakens. if enough time is allowed to pass, the offense is all but forgotten and I look back wistfully at the good things I shared with that person, which in turn makes me feel like I should seek them out, reconcile. for even if I remember what led me to drive them out of my life, at a much later time it becomes abstracted and distant, something I understand conceptually but which no longer carries the emotional weight it once held. as this emotional memory fades and the "immunity" weakens, I am left more vulnerable, open to subsequent "reinfection."
“My anger, in consequence of the damned laws of consciousness, is subject to chemical decomposition. As you look, its object vanishes into thin air, its reasons evaporate, the offender is nowhere to be found, the affront ceases to be an offense and becomes destiny, something like a toothache, for which nobody is to blame, and consequently there remains only the same outcome, which is banging one’s head as hard as one can against the stone wall.”
--Dostoyevsky, Notes from the Underground