Remembering

The phrase "I remember when..." is something that simultaneously warms my heart and worries me that I'm about to hear a long winded story of when you could buy a gumball for a penny. I've been back in America now for close to a month, and even though my blog posts have become considerably more spaced out, I'm starting to find myself more and more starting stories with "I remember a story from when I was in Jordan..."

Remembering is a funny thing. Grasping at past experiences seems to be about as easy as catching dust. Despite the unattainability of the raw experiences in their original form, there is a profound comfort in the fleeting resurgence of old feelings. It's like low fat ice cream, it's not the real thing, but when you don't have the option of having the original sometimes you settle for what's available.

When I was in Jordan, there were countless moments of remembering people, activities, food, and more from America. Now that I'm back in America, the opposite is true. Some days I just want a good piece of Kinafeh, or I want to be able to try to talk to somebody in Arabic, or I just want to say hello to old friends.

These are all examples of remembering on an individual level, but there's also a type of communal remembrance that happens in cultures. The can be a small community remembrance, like a family who will never forget the time the turkey was burnt on Thanksgiving. It can be bigger, like Cleveland's obsession with leg lamps. Or even bigger, like the world remembering the tragedy of 9/11.

The interesting thing is how there are so many different memories that shape how we define ourselves. For example, Israelis have a lot of memories of Palestinian terrorist attacks, while Palestinians have memories of Israeli terrorist attacks. It seems like two collective memories can easily form, and sometimes this is what makes unity so difficult. When a drone strike in Yemen kills innocent civilians, the people in Yemen will remember it vividly, just like Americans remember the killing of our innocent civilians. Now what forms is people with memories of what we simplify as "the West" coming in and killing their relatives and friends, while "the West" has a collective memory of the very opposite.

Remembrance is an important thing. A couple of weeks after I got back I went to a Memorial Day service, and that was just one of the sobering times when we are reminded to remember. I think it is equally important what we chose to remember One of the great things I learned about remembrance while in Jordan is that there is no limit to it. Often times there is a notion that memories fill up a container, and there's a certain point where that container gets full and no new memories can be added. If that were the case, I would have forgotten much more English while I was learning Arabic. Adding new memories, memories of Syrians slain in a violent civil war, memories of Palestinians who have lost their homes, memories of Israelis who have lost their lives, memories of Iraqis who died of malnutrition in the 90's are all things we can add to our collective memories. The beautiful thing about adding them is it gives us common ground with those who often feel distant from us, estranged by our differences. I'm not saying that's enough to end violence, or create world peace, but it is enough to give life to the past, and to create a better now.