This is not at all to distract from the previous two posts. You guys should really go back and read/comment on Melanie's stuff before you even start this. Seriously!!! They're much more important topics. This is just a personal thing.
Okay, so I was reading Elie Wiesel's Nobel Lecture from 1986 online. And I wanted to share an excerpt:
"Of course we could try to forget the past. Why not? Is it not natural for a human being to repress what causes him pain, what causes him shame? Like the body, memory protects its wounds. When day breaks after a sleepless night, one's ghosts must withdraw; the dead are ordered back to their graves. But for the first time in history, we could not bury our dead. We bear their graves within ourselves.
For us, forgetting was never an option.
Remembering is a noble and necessary act. The call of memory, the call to memory, reaches us from the very dawn of history. No commandment figures so frequently, so insistently, in the Bible. It is incumbent upon us to remember the good we have received, and the evil we have suffered. New Year's Day, Rosh Hashana, is also called Yom Hazikaron, the day of memory. On that day, the day of universal judgment, man appeals to God to remember: our salvation depends on it. If God wishes to remember our suffering, all will be well; if He refuses, all will be lost. Thus, the rejection of memory becomes a divine curse, one that would doom us to repeat past disasters, past wars."
http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1986/wiesel-lecture.html
So as I'm reading this, I'm thinking about myself.(And no, for all of you who know what I was thinking about, I'm not quite brave enough to post it on this blog yet. Maybe someday, but not now. And if you're confused, facebook message me and I'll talk to you there.) Not that anything in my life can compare to the atrocities of WWII, but anyway, I was thinking about how much I relate to this idea, of desperately wanting to forget the past and yet realizing that forgetting isn't the right thing to do, nor is it even really possible. And I'm not entirely sure where I'm going with this, but I guess I'm wondering, why is trying to forget our defense mechanism? What should we do with painful memories, if forgetting is ultimately worse than remembering? And how do you remember without feeling like you did about it at the time? How do you heal? How do you turn past wrongs into present opportunities to do God's work in the world?
I guess I should just up my Zoloft, but those are my thoughts and I wanted to share. And I seriously do want input, since I can't talk to you guys in person right now.
8 comments:
I know this isn't exactly on topic, but reading your post made me think of one of the best books I've ever read. ¨The Giver¨ by Lois Lowry. It deals with a society that doesn't want to cope with memories and throws out the good with bad. Anyway, it's time for me to go to bed. Perhaps I'll think deeper later.
One thought I'm having is that there's a vast difference between simply remembering and dealing with something from the past. If Wiesel were only talking about being haunted by the atrocities he and others witnessed, he'd be a screaming mess--and who could blame him? But that's not what his writings and talks show.
When Wiesel says "Remember," it's an active encouragement to himself and all his readers and listeners to take steps to guard against such behaviors ever happening to someone else, to think about what happened, yes, but to effect change in himself, a kind of growth that now can live in the light despite the painful reality that the new man emerged from the horrible experiences of night.
How does one get there? You're thoughtful; you are good at putting things in perspective; you have resources that can assist in the Long Night's Journey Into Day. Of course, zoloft is a good step, and so is therapy. So are the conversations you've been having with your fellow poddies. And don't underestimate the power of prayer. I know I'm praying for you; I believe God has big plans for you--even when and maybe even because they emerge from pain.
Thanks for listening to my ramblings. Love you, Sarah girl! Karen
I LOVE THE GIVER!!!!!!!
And Karen, that comment was coherent. Good job for 3 in the morning.
That's all for now.
I removed the last comment because I posted twice. Just had the compulsive need to explain. :)
To forget is to deny who we are. Good things and bad things happen to us, and, just like the Israelites, the events of our narrative define who we are. Good or bad, we become different after each day has past. If we forget about things that have come to define us, then we forget who our real identity in an effort to stay the person we're familiar with. The way I see it... we just end up being confused. At least that's what happens to me.
I have these things that I don't necessarily want to forget, but I do wish they would have happened differently. I'm not sure that's any different. So I try not to think about the way I felt at a certain time in my life because that feeling got me hurt.
So for me, trying to forget is a defense mechanism because if I think about things too much, I'll want them to go back to the good way they were before they were wrong. I don't know if that makes sense outside my head. (Maybe I should just make that the theme of the blog for all of us so we don't have to say it every time we type something.)
What to do with memories is something I don't yet have figured out. The same goes for the rest of the questions, basically. I know why I do the wrong thing; I just can't figure out the right thing! I do think (and this is entering the land of happy sayings and cliché) think it might be better in the long run to wait it out. Maybe what we do with the memories is just that. We remember them, and we feel about them the way we did. Maybe that's when that healing thing starts to happen. What do you think, Sarah, about healing still hurting? Does that happen with injuries, oh future-doctor-friend-o-mine? I have a few injuries that are technically 'healed,' but they still hurt. Maybe we never stop feeling, but we have to do that to keep remembering the significance of an event. In that way we do what Karen suggested and try to keep the same thing from happening to others? So the healing would come through feeling, which would come through remembering... and all of this leads to bring about God's work in the world when we turn around and stop someone else (or ourselves) from 'falling into night' again. Maybe I'm just repeating what Karen said. I think that's the best part of the blog... putting things into your own words. I don't mean to plagiarize. : )
I do think feeling is a big thing, though. I, at least, remember most of all how I felt. I might not remember the song in the background or the color of the carpet or what I had for lunch, but I remember how I felt. Curse? (The funny thing is I just mistyped that, and it read Cures? for a second... true story)
I'd also be interested to hear what you think about not being bitter! Sheesh. I just think that with all this feeling and remembering I tend to hold onto things instead of just remembering. Maybe bitter is the wrong word for me. I just thought of another one, but then I got distracted. Bitter might imply a lack of forgiveness somewhere. I don't think that's the case for me (in the situation I've been thinking about). I just think it's a big possibility (when remembering the way I felt at a certain point in time) to be 'feeling' the wrong thing. This is all very jumbled for me. I think I have it figured out, and then I turn around to find I haven't.
I do think this blog is a good way (especially in the summer) to work on that last question of yours. How do we turn past wrongs into present opportunities to do God's work in the world? I think telling each other stuff like this and then making sure we’re not all bitter old hags who’ve been hurt by the world one too many times. You know what I mean? Maybe… maybe not. : ) I feel strongly about you in my lower esophagus, and I really am glad you posted this. I feel you, friend. And, though you're not yet to this season, this post reminds me of the third season of Alias...
Hello people on the blog... this is Marcella. I've forgotten my password and I don't know what to do! I may have to get a new account and you can invite the new me to blog and kick the old me off, which would be sad. Okay, I just wanted to share my horrible dilema!!!! When I figure it out I'll write something on topic...
Sarah...first of all, I love you. Really. Totally. Like, you so totally rock, squirt! Now having made it obvious that surfer-lingo is most definitely not me, I will proceed to try to say something about the post. It is interesting that forgetting is our default mechanism. I have tried to forget things that make me feel guilty, because if I don't think about something then I don't have to deal with it. If I can push it out of my brain, then it's gone for a little while. I spent a considerable number of years enslaved to a brain that invented memories. Took thoughts and made them real. So I spent all this time trying to find ways that I could convince myself that these fake memories were, in fact, fake. I used to be embarrassed that I had problems that I was dealing with that most other people will never understand. But, now, it's a part of my story. My narrative, as Laura has been saying. I'm just vaguely mentioning it now, but it's a part of my narrative I haven't shared with most of you, and I'm sure I'll get into it more later on. But those memories of hard things are now part of what makes me, me.
When I read the quote from Elie Wiesel, it seemed to me to speak of the inability to supress. Inability to reconcile what happenned. The Jews could not just bottle up the memory, they could not simply "put the dead back in their graves" and walk around with a happy face. There was no closure, there was no way to end the pain of their people. Perhaps that is what makes things difficult. There is tension because we think that in order to be healed, we must no longer feel pain. There is a tension to appear that everything is alright. Maybe healing comes from admitting that our memories can't always be "fixed". Maybe healing comes from seeing how those events defined us and seeing what God has done in our lives through those memories. If there was no wound, there was no healing. If there was no sadness, there was no one to surround us with a hug. God's love being made perfect in our weakness. I don't really know what I'm saying, but I'll let Sarah decide if I can join Karen in the ranks of being coherent.
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