June 29, 2021 Commentary at 600 miles per hour

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June 29, 2021 Commentary at 600 miles per hour: Sitting at airports make you contemplate. Think a bit. And realize that there have been many times I have been taken aback by the way the World around me has operated. These are not significant things, and mostly just mundane events that make you consider why they happen. Memory is fickle. Looking at the airport, with people falling off the seams, one realizes that dark memories are abhorred and quicker forgotten the better. Those days of horror. Those days of an extreme uneasiness, depending on the affliction. Those moments, those days, those weeks are blocked out. Because survival depends on those moments being deposited in some recess of the mind where it may be locked away forever. But what else will we forget about the months that, at least in Southern California, appears to be memories? Will we forget the people who were at your side when you may have been ill? Will you forget the frantic work you did to offer support for those in need? Will they forget what you did? At the institutional level, like the governments and the corporations, the memory will hopefully be utilized for something new, something that arises out of what we experienced and are still experiencing. There the memory is well curated, remember what matters, erase what was not so nice. History, as a form of institutionalized memory, will do its rightful job and there will be segments in the books in the years to come. The Pandemic. But what about you? What will you remember? Will that be done conveniently? Or genuinely? Will there be the moments of gratitude – which seems to bring on the discomfort of obligations, be best forgotten? Will you remember the people? My contact list got the biggest bump in contacts in the April and May of 2021. Will there be memories of those people? Will we remember each other? Perhaps exchange non-distress messages. Perhaps finally see the unmasked face. Perhaps finally sit in peace without the restlessness of the pandemic impacting our every moment. I just hope some things will be remembered, acknowledged. Without that, we build a selfish World, where every relationship is transactional. There was a need, you chose to fulfil the need, no one asked you to, and eventually at the end you are taken for granted. Of course, that made sense at that time, what you did, but now as we march beyond those memories, those acts of kindness also become normalized just as COVID-19 becomes a “common cold” of the future. As I looked at the people milling through the airport and saw the stories of COVID-19 going down to the “Health” section of the local newspaper, at a personal level I started to realize that the enemy of memory is being taken for granted. When the special moments of the memories disappear those who help make those memories get taken for granted. I hope we do not make COVID-19 one of those “taken for granted” moments of our collective lives. It has too much to teach us. Never forget what Elvis said, “Memories, pressed between the pages of my mind”

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