Remembrances

Watching this flash film again, my initial reaction was jaded. The memories and emotions flooded back as the movie progressed, but that moment of distance troubles me.

Distance from a historical event is not an evil. It allows more resources and more historical context. We can look back as through a rearview mirror and see the scope of the event, with a readier eye for where we are headed. The years since September 11, 2001 remind us of how united Americans can be as a civilized society, and how splintered we can be across ideological lines.

But rolling ahead with the metaphor: Objects in mirror are closer than they appear. Our perception of distance can lead us to dismiss much of what we understood at the time as archaic, regardless of whether it is as true (or truer) today as it was then. It is easy to become desensitized to ideas as well as images. It is not enough to be bystanders, or actors for some half-forgotten cause. We ought to remember.