Remembering

What does your mind do when dealt a quiet moment? Or in the middle of the night when a coughing fit awakens you, and you have 10 or 15 minutes before falling back to sleep? What do you think about? The day’s events, people who pop to mind from nowhere? Issues that perplex you? Working through possible solutions? What?


For me it is all of the above. Oh, variants happen, like struggling to recall a specific musical phrase, tune, or long ago lyric. Remembering fantastical vistas once seen as a kid on a family vacation. The Grand Canyon is one, Bryce and Zion Canyons, too. The wide open spaces of the enormous western United States. Mountains, lonely plains, sere and prickly with odd plants barely grasping soil.


I think of current events that cause particular pain: the anti-abortion legislation by states to test Roe V Wade yet again. Political posturing about states’ rights rather than people rights. Fake religious values boasted in inappropriate places. Immigrant children separated from parents – both those yet to be reunited with their families, and those recently entering a ‘system’ which continues to separate kids from parents. Foreign affairs policy that allowed conditions to build to this immigration crisis, that is not a crisis; it has been there all along. Political manipulation of the issue has made it into something entirely different. For political reasons. To divide and separate Americans from their truer instincts and values.


I remember people in vignettes of time far in my past. Grandparents barely remembered and the circumstances forever embracing those moments long ago. Or a neighbor who was kindly and grandmotherly; who was she? I remember her home, but not her name. How long ago were these memories? 60 years, or 70? Why remember them at this time of my life? What purpose is served?


The past as prolog to the life we live this day. Someone or something sticks with me to lend a small piece of values? Perspective? The long march of time that reminds us that this day shall pass and we will have many more to make up for the mistakes and mishandling of affairs we face. The long ago happenings and people are somehow calming. They populate our universe of experience and feeling. We are truly not alone. Others have shaped our knowledge of life.


The Holocaust happened. So did American slavery. Abolitionists fought slavery from the very beginning. The Trail of Tears of Native North American Indian Tribes; displaced from their lands to empty spaces thought to be worthless, like the Indians themselves. The manipulations of man against man. The fight to survive at the cost of others. The greed of getting just for the sake of getting more. The senseless violence allowed to exist in our society without effective controls for public safety. We say controls are there, but the violence continues regardless.


Our society denies the negative daily. If it isn’t embraced, I guess it doesn’t need a solution?

Instead we engage in ideology wars for no gain whatever. Wasting time, energy and creativity on worthlessness.


We have such a need to focus on the important things that will matter long after we are gone. We have work to do. We have the intelligence and intellect to make a difference. To do right. Not for self, but for others.


Why do we avoid these challenges? Are memories a means to urge us forward? Are we reminded of the simple thrust of what ought to be, the desired outcomes we could be working toward?


Sounds a bit fanciful. But maybe it is true. Perhaps we should listen. And feel.


Then act.


May 22. 2019