“The degree of slowness is directionally proportional to the intensity of memory. The degree of speed is directionally proportional to the intensity of forgetting.” ― Milan Kundera

What speed is your life moving these days?

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I’ve written before and said to others many times that as I get older time seems to be speeding past me. The days are slipping through my grasp. I lay my head on the pillow each night and it seems I was just there a few minutes ago. I bought a t-shirt with “I though getting old would take longer” written across the front.

And yet, at other times I look around at family and friends who are busy with the normal activities of living and I feel as if I am sitting on a bench under a tree of memory still where I was so long ago. Time doesn’t seem to have moved much at all. There are moments each day when I am suspended in memories.

I believe that it’s important for all of us to spend time remembering events and people that matter to us. This helps to make us more whole.

Day by day, I perceive that my life is moving along at a faster pace and simultaneously there are moments when I know I am at a dead stop and all the rest of the world is shooting past. I don’t think this is an uncommon experience. The trick, I suppose, is learning how to balance back and forth between these two speeds of living. We must all stay on the bus as it hurls us through our life but also, when necessary, step off and sit on the curb for bit and catch our breath (or let the nausea pass).

“Silently, one by one, in the infinite meadows of heaven,
Blossomed the lovely stars, the forget-me-nots of the angels.”
― Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I have given my first day of class speeches now. This year it’s different. We’ve come through another disaster. We’re getting through it, I’m reminded as I look out on my class full of young faces, many wearing masks, most with looks of uncertainty peering back at me. Probably not the same as usual. This time there’s something more, an extra tinge of worry. Or is that just me looking for something?

Last week we heard from an expert telling us all about the characteristics of this generation of students – a group that grew up feeling anxious and worried about their future. And then a global pandemic came and took away their high school graduation. It made me think that while caught up on the business of everyday activity, it’s critical to always be thoughtful, to let memory and reflection anchor action.

There have been two young boys sitting with their dad several pews in front of me for many years in our church worship. I looked up recently after we’d all come back from being locked out and isolated for so long. How did those two boys get so tall so fast? I think they each doubled in height! I can’t even remember so much of when my daughter was a child – and I was her caregiver during each day. I guess I just wasn’t paying attention. These days I’m always ready to shout out loud to my grandson’s parents, as if a meteor were about to strike, to be careful and remember as much as they can.

“Time goes faster the more hollow it is. Lives with no meaning go straight past you, like trains that don’t stop at your station.” ― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, 

It’s important to find a balance to your life by anchoring your pace to meaningful memory.

Maybe balance isn’t the right word here. Once we begin the habit of memory, it serves to stabilize our lives during the chaos and commotion that frenetic living often brings. This is what I mean by balance. An ability to stand on both feet at once, living and remembering, and thoughtfully move in the right direction.

“It is a phrase that may well perplex a poor modern, girt about on every side by clocks and chimes…For we are all so busy, and have so many far-off projects to realise, and castles in the fire to turn into solid habitable mansions on a gravel soil, that we can find no time for pleasure trips into the Land of Thought and among the Hills of Vanity.” ― Robert Louis Stevenson

There’s a balance that’s necessary between living an ordered life with a purpose and at the same time making time and effort to pause, remember and reflect.

1. Memory is important because it helps us to anchor what we now do to what is important and meaningful – it helps us to understand a larger context. We must steal time away from our speeding lifestyle and create habits of reflection.
2. Memory helps us to know how to feel. Our memory is a reminder of deep longings and essential emotions. When it first happened, we didn’t know how we felt. It takes time to understand what a feeling really means as we mature and discover new depths to our character.
3. Memories become a language that we use to share and connect with others. They become a common bridge we can use to communicate deeper experiences – sometimes without having to say everything out loud. Memories are meant to be passed on to others, shared and used to enrich the lives of our ancestors.

“How often do we tell our own life story? How often do we adjust, embellish, make sly cuts? And the longer life goes on, the fewer are those around to challenge our account, to remind us that our life is not our life, merely the story we have told about our life. Told to others, but—mainly—to ourselves.”  ― Julian Barnes

The moral of my post: sit down for a few minutes today and remember someone dear to you. Write a note or a journal entry. Say a prayer. File something away in your heart. Save it to pass on to someone who will need it later.