Memorial Day
Memorial Day began as a day to remember those who died in the American Civil War. It was, in its origins, a day of reconciliation, a day to bring people together after the bitter divisions of the Civil War. After World War I, it became a day to honor American dead in any war. While it may not be true to the originally intended meaning, it serves me as a day to remember the dead more generally, as a day to ponder the meaning of reconciliation, of forgiveness, as a day to think about wars and peace. I deeply respect those who have given their lives in the service of their country but I also remember others who've fallen and I like to think about peace as well as war. I also like to use the day as a day of reflection generally, a day to think about the past and the future, about the meaning of past events and what I can learn from the past.
I find myself straining to recall events of the past, faces from the past. I try to live in the present but I value the past so I've been surprised how quickly the past fades unless it is memorialized in some vivid way. Nowadays when I try to remember faces I need a picture to remind me and even then I often feel that I'm looking at a stranger. (It's the same thing when I look in the mirror but that's a story for another day.) When I try to remember events, I find that only my own contemporaneous notes bring the events to life and even then the events have little color. When I see old friends and we reminisce about the past, their memories are often completely different from mine.
It may have something to do with the way we remember things as better than they were, it may be that age has dimmed my memory, it may be that I was a poor observer at the time. But I think there's something else at work: The observer of the past was a different person than I am today. My recollections of the past are filtered through years of aging and experience. I may well remember things exactly as they would have been if I were the same age then as I am now.
I think there's a lesson here. It supports my ideas about resilience, it supports my ideas about looking to the future. It is that when we are learning, when we are experiencing events, when we are dealing with people, we need to be more thoughtful about how they are shaping us for the future. We need, in some sense, to move forward in our lives and look back at what we're experiencing currently to get the most out of the experience. If we can do that, we won't be as troubled by bad events and we'll enjoy the good things more. We'll also learn more about ourselves.
Think about current events as if you're looking back on them at a future date. You'll learn more and you'll feel better about the events and yourself.
5-29-06
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