Everyone forgets. Names, dates, events. Not even the most sophisticated iPad or GPS will be able to help us remember everything we should remember. However, it is immensely important to understand the distinction between forgetting and unremembering....!
It's possible to forget the day you first fell in love -- but it should be impossible to unremember why you did. Likewise, why you chose this career, moved to this community, celebrated this event, visit this cemetery. To unremember what should be memorable is an act of sacrilege. History bursts with memorables -- from Christians dying in the Coliseum to Jews dying in the Holocaust, from Jonas Salk curing Polio to Neil Armstrong walking the Moon.
We each walk the world with distinct memorables of our own. Little moments and large discoveries which must not be taken for granted along with such all-too-common unremembereds like the day mom helped us take our first step, and dad toss our first ball.
Some among us -- saints and poets -- try to take upon them self to never unremember the little epiphanies which first opened such large lessons. In all likelihood, each of these will find an echo in your own heart: Bullies when challenged will cry...neighbors when asked will help...clergy when needed will come... Christmas will arrive even after Santa has left it...cops when indispensable will act indispensably... Wrigley Field's dark concrete innards will always emerge into green ivy and lawn. Also, planes are faster than buses and buses faster than streetcars, but streetcars meant time to think before you acted....movies may be in 3-D technicolor, but life itself is usually in 2-D black&white....when they say with a tear they will never forget you, remember they always do...oh, and in this great gleaming world of new technology, so far it still takes us to turn them on.
If we forget incidentals, certainly we can forgive ourselves that. But if we unremember what the world has revealed to us, we cannot forgive that! And we must not forgive that! For if we fail to bring what we've learned to the distracted attention of tomorrow's learners, tomorrow becomes even less than yesterday. Which would make those of us living today the most forgettable generation of all.
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Repetition and other rote exercises have carried me thus far ... but there comes a time when for no discernable reason things start to slip away ... I would like a 'pill' to easily counteract that reality in my life ... instead we are presented with foolish chemistry designed to increase the size and staying power of 'whatever' ... Sigh!
ReplyDeleteI think I sigh with you. Maybe some of life's realities are better forgotten. Some, though, can always be cherished. The trick is knowing the difference
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