It Always Starts As Just Another Day
Posted on 2004-11-06
I've been accused before, by people several decades my senior, of not understanding history and of not remembering properly the things which transpired before it was possible for me to form memories of them. This accusation comes, almost always, merely because I was born into a group they simply call 'you young people'.
But I do remember. I remember with the way my heart sinks every time I check the news now, with every person we kill or lose. I remember with every occasion I huddled in front of the television and cried. I remember with my feelings for now, knowing that years and years ago, a woman my age must have set next to her radio and wept for the memories she was making, and the ones the world was making for her.
We wage war now with so much technology behind us. But if we know so much, if we can make these things, why do we have to use them??? We keep creating more and more things, capable of doing such harm. When will we make something capable of doing something equally as good??? I remember the ways we've been attacked. My being is stamped forever with the image of steel and glass, falling to the ground like a waterfall. And I remember, without a certain image, a submarine at the bottom of the ocean, now serving as a tomb.
That is more than any of us should have to remember. These are stories and pictures and screams which should be banned from our knowledge - not because we forget, but because they can't, shouldn't happen. We must be smarter than that by now. We must be capable of something better. Peace on Earth is such an over used phrase and such an under utilised practice.
I remember, I remember, I remember..... but what, in the end, comes from that remembering???
I remember that the world changes a little or a lot every day. And as much as it hurts, I wouldn't want to forget that. Not until we all safely can.