Today I want to talk about memory and perspective - those are topics that are on my mind, for obvious reasons. I’ve been on a nostalgia tour of my (relatively distant) past, and it’s been fun, and I learned, or at least re-learned, some lessons. I went today out to the house I was born in - 100 Deer Run, Glenwood, NY. Biking up through the neighborhood, I couldn’t find the place - partly because it’s a confusing neighborhood, partly because it turns out the new owners painted the house blue. I watched a cop sail past me twice, and had to remember that these little northeastern neighborhoods that cling to cliffs in upstate NY are not exactly, shall we say, stranger-friendly. But I found the place. Now, I have sketchy memories at best of the inside of the house, but I remember the yard really well. I used to actually have this reoccurring nightmare where I would be walking up our long driveway to the house and to the left of me was the cliff that went up away from the driveway, so high you couldn’t see the top. I would clamber up that hill (for some reason, in the dream) on pine needles under the tree, and crest the top to find a woods. Walking through the woods, the ground would start to break up and become rocky and hot, and just then I would emerge into an open field. Overhead I could hear helicopters chasing me, and I would get scared, and run to hide under a cardboard box that someone had placed out in the middle of an empty field. Climbing under the box, I would suddenly realize that of course a helicopter could see me under this box, so I would frantically climb out from under the box and run across the field to a camper parked by the side of the field, throw open the door, run through the camper, throw open a door on the other side, and then…wake up. Weird, huh?
Anyway, the point is - the driveway is there, but it’s only about 50 feet long. And the hill? It’s about 7 feet tall. I can see over it. Other things, too: I remember climbing over a stream to an island near our house. Well, the stream is there - it’s about a foot wide - and so is the island - about 4 feet wide. And I remember playing baseball in the back yard, and there was a tall cliff that led up to a busy road up at the top of the cliff. Well, the cliff is 6 feet high, and the road is…very much not busy.
OK, OK, Adam - this is obvious, you say. Of course, when you’re a little kid, things look bigger. And yes, that makes sense. But it’s amazing to be actually *confronted* with that. I mean, these things from my childhood, they loom large. They are, believe it or not, archetypes in my life. When I confront a hard problem, it’s like that cliff up to the busy road. When I have nightmares, I’m back walking that long driveway. And I was thinking about what that meant, and realized that, as humans, we have this powerful need - a need to tell stories. Anyone will tell you that I am more melodramatic than most. To me, things have to have *meaning*. I search for symbols in everything. I want so desperately for life to have a purpose, and it leads me to create these metaphors, larger-than-life narratives. We all do this, of course, and it isn’t necessarily a bad thing. But it is interesting to suddenly realize that the things we hold most dear are often creations of our own mind.
Another story comes to mind along these lines. I was hanging out with my uncle when the topic of his brother (my other uncle’s) death came up. This is a story I’ve told and retold many times - to other people, of course, but mostly in my own head. I read one time that there are really only 40 stories in the world, and this was one of my 40, and the story goes like this: My uncle Emil was always a bit odd, the black sheep of the family. He couldn’t get his act together. Couldn’t hold down a job. Well, when I was about 20, he started to get his life back together. He had two kids with a woman named Cathy who I was begrudgingly told to call Aunt Cathy even though everyone in the family barely hid their contempt for her. One day, the four of them were in their apartment, when a man broke in and had a gun. He told Cathy and Emil to go and get their valuables and he herded the kids into the kitchen. When they came back, he took the stuff, told the two of them to get down on their knees, and right in front of the two kids, shot both of them. Then he went out to his pickup truck and shot himself. Cathy lived, and took the kids, but my uncle died. And the kids have been messed up ever since; rumor has it they ended up in juvie. This story is - not exactly happy or heartwarming - but full of pathos. My heart went out to my uncle, who was turning his life around. My heart went out to the kids, forced to watch their parents get shot. My heart even went out to Cathy, forced to raise two kids on her own surrounded by family that hated her.
Only, here’s the thing: almost none of that story is actually true. Yes, my uncle was shot by a crazy man who also shot the woman he was with, then went out to his pickup and drove a few miles up the road and shot himself. Cathy did end up raising the kids, and they did go to juvie (and it’s true that most of the family thought she was a bit slow and a terrible mom). But the man who shot them was Emil’s crazy upstairs tenant that he had rented half his place to, with a known history of being not quite right. And there was no robbery; the guy was mad because he thought Emil was poisoning him with “chlorine vapors”. And, at the time, Emil had taken up with a new woman, Diane. Diane - who none of us even know or met - was the one who got shot in the face and lived. And there was no “execution style killing”; my uncle was shot in the basement at his computer, in the back. The kids were not anywhere nearby; they had already been taken by Cathy.
I have no idea how I got the story so wrong, but I’ve been telling it this way for 15+ years.
Now, the real story is still sad and dramatic, but obviously not nearly as dramatic (or melodramatic) as my version. For some reason, my brain really wanted the story to play out the way a movie or an episode of CSI might; with good guys, bad guys, redemption, Act I, Act II, and so forth. But life - real life - doesn’t play out so cleanly.
Besides just being an interesting phenomenon, it begs the question: what to do about this? Is this good? Is it good to construct these stories? Buddhism would have us believe that what’s best is to see the world the way it really is; the pure unvarnished truth. Part of me agrees with that. The journey I’ve been on for the last 5 years could be seen as one of “decreasing drama”. Because I’m so inclined towards theatrics and emotionality, that’s probably been a good journey to be on. But where does it stop? For example, I’m no longer inclined to believe in “terrible people”. When you’ve seen as many different philosophies on life as I have, it’s hard to get too worked up about the life choices another person makes. I only have two rules, now: make yourself happy, and don’t hurt anybody. And sometimes I even relax those a little bit. But - here’s the question: do I believe in *great* people? *Can* you believe in great people without believing in terrible ones? What would good look like if evil didn’t exist? I don’t think you can feel warm without first feeling cold, feel happy without knowing what it’s like to feel sad. Some may disagree with me about this, but there’s some hard science to support the notion that what we, as humans, are good at perceiving is *relative* data, not absolute. We hear things as loud relative to the quiet that came before; smells are strong only for a while and then they fade. So, if Hitler was simply confused and anxious, does that mean that Martin Luther King was just in the right place at the right time? Can you have Gandhi without Stalin? Obama without Putin? If my parents were just doing the best they could, how heroic is it to be a parent? If people who join the NRA (as my uncle has) are just doing what they think is best, then is gun control a cause worth marching for? Who are we marching against? Our own uncles?
Where does equanimity end and passion begin?
I have no answers - but these are my questions.
