It is hard for me to accept that people forget because they have never lived in a world where forgetting could get you killed.
It isn’t always that they don’t care but they certainly don’t care enough to examine it with the urgency you do.
When you grow up in danger, your brain learns plenty of different ways to remember and think. You don’t just remember events you encode them. You remember the feeling of them. The weight of words, the intonation, the rise and fall of a voice, which syllables were stressed. The sound of footsteps. The number of gunshots. The single meal you had that week. You remember because survival demanded so much precision. And you were never safe enough to be careless and forgetful.
And no matter how long ago it was, you carry those ways forward. Into the present.
You recognize the same evil, the same patterns, the same harm in different outfits. And you do try to change the course and protect others.
It can be horrifying that many forget, and more importantly that they can.
And worse, that they alienate you for not forgetting, silently, gracefully , with such impressive civility, for caring or knowing too much and for making decisions in line with that.
Rarely you meet people who remember the way you do. People whose minds were shaped by the same necessity. I don’t have language for how much that matters, especially when you are standing at the very edge of your will to stay alive.
I am thankful for those who have been there for me the past few days. That must be said. I would not forget that either.
When you grow up in danger, your brain learns plenty of different ways to remember and think. You don’t just remember events you encode them. You remember the feeling of them. The weight of words, the intonation, the rise and fall of a voice, which syllables were stressed. The sound of footsteps. The number of gunshots. The single meal you had that week. You remember because survival demanded so much precision. And you were never safe enough to be careless and forgetful.
And no matter how long ago it was, you carry those ways forward. Into the present.
You recognize the same evil, the same patterns, the same harm in different outfits. And you do try to change the course and protect others.
It can be horrifying that many forget, and more importantly that they can.
And worse, that they alienate you for not forgetting, silently, gracefully , with such impressive civility, for caring or knowing too much and for making decisions in line with that.
Rarely you meet people who remember the way you do. People whose minds were shaped by the same necessity. I don’t have language for how much that matters, especially when you are standing at the very edge of your will to stay alive.
I am thankful for those who have been there for me the past few days. That must be said. I would not forget that either.
