CHRISTMAS MEMORIES IN A LAND THAT IS CONFUSED

I get frustrated by not getting my way as I want it, when I want it.  I can get bent out of shape when traffic slows me, or someone has a problem in front of me at the supermarket checkout.  Especially when I pay for something, I expect to have it when I want it, and even feel entitled to it.  As such, I guess I fit in with most people in our society.

The latest battle in the undeclared (but bloody, oh so bloody) War on Christmas was that some people didn’t get their Christmas presents when they wanted them.  TV news programs dutifully reported the outrage.  People whose “Christmas was ruined” or those whose “Christmas joy was stolen by a Grinch”.  I’m sure it was frustrating—and like everything else we feel we’re entitled to, there was someone to blame.  “FedEx didn’t keep their promise”, one unhappy Christmas-ite said. No recognition—at least not aired—that maybe they waited until the last minute to order, that the delivery systems were overtaxed, that weather happened, or that even—saints preserve us—stuff doesn’t work out sometimes.  In fact, in much of the world, including in Bethlehem, a lot of stuff doesn’t work out a lot of the time.  But that didn’t stop the baby being born.

One person said, “We lost a Christmas memory. One we will never get back.”  Now leaving aside the fact that you can’t have a memory of something that hasn’t happened, it makes me wonder if we’ve become a people with a skewed sense of what memory is.  Do we really cherish the memories of our experiences, or have we become so set on “capturing” memories that the thing captured becomes more important than the life event we lived?

My wife and I were in Paris for our 25^th anniversary this past fall, and went to the Louvre one day.  We got to the room with the Mona Lisa early enough so that we could almost get close enough to see it (when we passed by a couple hours later, it would have been almost impossible to get into the room, crowded as it was with hundreds of people).  Almost everyone was taking a photo of the painting, and we saw many people who never looked at the painting except through their camera or smart phone. 

That happened in almost every gallery we went to.  People walking in and taking a photo—snap, snap, snap—of every picture they could, without every looking at the photo itself.  I don’t know the quality of the photos they got, but it troubles me that they seemed so obsessed with having their machine preserve their memory, instead of relying on the wonderful eyes, brain, mind and spirit of the amazing human being they are.

I suppose the idea is that they can now show their friends and family: “See, I was there. Here’s the photo”.  As if that will either convince or awe the person who sees it. 

Granted, I’ve posted photos of our trip on Face Book, and believe in the power of images.  I also believe in the power of words, of telling a story.  If a picture is worth a thousand words, a story that creates a picture in the hearer’s mind can create a whole world.  I fear for the diminishment of language in our culture in so many ways. One of them is the elevation of the machine as the recorder of our memories, and a lack of trust in our ability to create narratives that embody who we are and what we’ve experienced.

There’s a photo (below) that was on AOL’s front page this Christmas that I’ve attached. (If I’ve broken any copyright laws, sue me). I wasn’t there at what looks to be an amazingly beautiful display of light. I’m not sure people in the foreground were really there either.  Note the little phones they have out “capturing” the event.

I don’t know how much of the experience they “got” on those little screens.  They were preserving a two-dimensional image of a multi-dimensional event.  I imagine some of them sent the image in “real time” to friends around the world, or in another part of the park.  I just wonder how much they—how much we—are truly present to the experience itself.

Just asking, as the kids say.  (Actually, they say “just sayin’” even when it’s often a question they are posing).

We took about 700 pictures on our anniversary trip, and quite a few of them help me remember. Help me.  When we sit and talk about them, the picture of St. Brigid’s Cathedral will lead us to a story of the man at the café and the man at the tourist office there in Kildare.  I don’t have a photo of either one of them.  But I have very clear memories of what we shared.

Be beauty. Be justice.  Be memory.

Patrick