Lest We Remember

"The ancient man approached God (or even the gods) as the accused person approaches his judge. For the modern man the roles are reversed. He is the judge: God is in the dock. He is quite a kindly judge: if God should have a reasonable defense for being the god who permits war, poverty, and disease, he is ready to listen to it. The trial may even end in God's acquittal. But the important thing is that Man is on the bench and God is in the dock."

― C. S. Lewis

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Dear Kate,

"Lest we forget," that's what I saw flashing across the top of the bus, where the route number would usually go, my path named, now alternated with the words (of warnings?), as if saying to forget the past is to know not the future too.

Where else did I read these three words this year?  In the library, where I took the bus to last night, picking up some books and documentaries to help me not forget.  There was a Remembrance Day display in the library, only that this year it could hardly be called one: three little pots of red flowers with the three words on paper pasted on the wall behind, slightly above the one shade of crimson, way above the graves.

Otherwise everything else says "Lest we remember."  (If we know what to remember at all.)  Everybody please calm down, try not to think bad thoughts.  It is traumatic to recall, even more traumatic to hear, when every word about history is bound to hurt someone somehow.  One more day to lie low, and then frivolousness will descend to bless all mankind with goodwill and joy, You-Better-BELIEVE-Or-Die! kinda hope.  Well, death happened to Jesus the moment He came as a human baby, but let's not remember that either.

Depression and anxiety, the world closing in on a person, I was told in some mental health training, happens, and it happens to everyone.  A big deal, but the fact that it will hit you is not, because we are all human and who knows what is lurking around the corner.  Just need to face it and deal with the big deal as if it is not, normalize the happening, destigmatize it.  It's a very humanizing thought, if being human is thought of with certain assumptions.

What assumptions?

I don't know.  I am no expert on the matter.  But I do know we don't want to be accused of anything, that's for sure.  For sure too this world is a depressing and anxiety-inducing place, this life, our human existence; so something is wrong, some sort of accusation has to be lodged against someone.  It's not me, that's all I know, a warm thought of self-acceptance that is a big part of my self-care.  War, poverty, and disease, someone is responsible for them, maybe I being a member of this big society should share a tiny part of the collective guilt.  But I donate to charities.  And the most carbon dioxide I produce is when talking about environmental issues.  Someone stands accused, and it finally can't be me.

We are warring, always, not a minute goes by without us remembering that.  All the shows we binge on, what are they about?  We don't want to know who we really are, but can't come up with a different way to see ourselves either.  History is happening as we speak.  Lest we remember today when tomorrow comes.

Yours, Alex