"Roma:" How Remembering Really Matters

We think we are the ones who choose what to remember, but in truth, our memories use us, shape us, make us who we are, often without our even realizing it. 

          Twenty years ago, on my way to work, I used to walk past a shuttered cemetery that came right up to the sidewalk on Kalamazoo Ave, in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Very near the sidewalk, standing alone, were three simple stones. The epitaphs read “Francis B. Whitney, 1886-1960;” “Nora Whitney, 1891-1928;” and finally, “Baby Whitney, 1917.”

          I noticed the stones first, on a late-winter day, when everything was grey and brown with a glint of frost, when I was surprised to see a bright spray of yellow and red pansies firmly planted just before Baby Whitney’s stone. Looking closer, I realized that the flowers were made of silk.

          As I walked on, I wondered about those flowers. Was it possible that someone still remembered Baby Whitney’s birth, eighty years later? But how could that be? And why?

          Perhaps a younger brother or sister, someone who was born after Baby Whitney, left the flowers? Or was there no memory here at all, but just someone playing macabre tricks, carefully rearranging flowers for the odd thrill of it? But why?

          My curiosity was aroused. Genealogy is one of my hobbies. So, I scoured city records and census records for more information. Other than confirming that Francis Whitney had lived and died in Grand Rapids, and was married to Nora, I found little else. Family memories stretch back perhaps two, maybe even three generations. But as King Solomon once wrote, “The people of long ago are not remembered, nor will there be any remembrance of people yet to come by those who come after them” (Eccl 1:11).

          Mary Carruthers, a historian of memory, writes that, “ancient and medieval people reserved their awe for memory. Their greatest geniuses they describe as people of superior memories . . . and they regard it as a mark of superior moral character as well as intellect.” Plato’s teacher, the philosopher Socrates, was deeply concerned that the invention of reading and writing would erode our ability to remember and thus make us less human. In ancient days, you cultivated memory.

          You see, if you wanted to be a midwife in the days before the printing press and literacy, there were no written manuals to study in classrooms that would turn you into a midwife. No, you had to learn this art from your mother, who probably learned it from her mother’s mother. You learned by watching, by doing as your teacher instructed, and practicing. But you never knew more than what you remembered. There were no books. No internet. No FAQs. Just your memory. Something you cultivated, crated, paid attention to, made a living from, and clung to.

          Alfonso Cuarón’s "Roma" is based on his bittersweet memories of growing up with his family, and especially memories of their maid, Cleo. The movie is about how memories make us who we are.

          In fact, this movie is all reminisce, a rivulet of time past bubbling into and filling the present. Cuarón remembers both childhood glee and trauma. Interestingly, as viewers, we cannot know how good Cuarón’s memory is, or why he remembers what he does, or even what Cuarón has forgotten; how his memory works, or how our memory works is much more mysterious than we give memory credit for.

          Some of Cuarón’s memories are bitter. His father, a doctor, abandons not just his wife, Cuarón’s mother, but the entire family, neglecting the children, not paying the bills, lying to cover his tracks. Cleo, the maid, is often on the receiving end of small slights and harsh words by her masters. She is used by her boyfriend. These memories are not bitter just because of the facts, but because of the emotion attached to these memories, the feelings that are truer for Cuarón than the bare facts, the feelings that shape his attitude to others and to life.

          For Cuarón, these bitter memories—the emotional impact of them, that is—inform his present ideals. He will cultivate his memories, dwell in them until he has put them in a place he can live with, learning lessons for life and love along the way. In fact, I think Cuarón has made this movie just to make sure he masters his toxic, emotionally difficult memories so that they won’t subliminally influence his soul without him realizing it.

          On the other hand, some of Cuarón’s memories are sweet and a source of strength and encouragement. For example, Cuarón remembers how the whole extended family gathered for fun and fellowship at a Hacienda, or how his immediate family could sit together on the couch, happily watching TV, before the troubles began.

          But even these memories are instructive. The kids had fun, fun, fun at the family Hacienda; but the adults preyed on each other without the kids realizing it. The kids remember the press of warm flesh on the family’s TV couch, but the father was already plotting his exit. Memories—especially good ones of love, and attachment, and kindness, and success—positive memories can be the rock on which we build the house of self we inhabit; and toxic memories, even if we cannot recall them, can be the sand upon which our lives collapse.

          We think we are the ones who choose what to remember, but in truth, our memories use us, shape us, make us who we are, often without our even realizing it. This is why we must master memory, cultivate it. Memories and the emotions they trigger in us, can be bitter or sweet.

          But third, some of Alfonso Cuarón’s memories are actually impossible. Cleo has a miscarriage, and the military government slaughters hundreds of protesting students, scenes that Cuarón cannot have witnessed. But the brain knows how to improvise and fill in the blanks. Many memories end up being the stories we tell ourselves, even without all the facts, and sometimes regardless of the facts.

          In one powerful scene, the climax of the movie, the maid Cleo is left on the beach with the children, who venture into the water. The undertow catches them. They can’t make it back to shore. They are going to drown. But Cleo, who cannot herself swim, wades in, waves washing over her, plucks first one, and then another out of the water, saving their lives at great risk to her own.

          Ultimately, Cuarón’s memories are like those waves—they are angry and bitter, in danger of taking him away, of leaving him overwhelmed by the past. And at the same time, his own memory of that terrible day on the beach is especially sweet for the love that was expressed in Cleo’s courage, and in all the children in a tangle of hugs and embraces with Cleo on the beach. Because they remember Cleo’s love, given freely and at great risk, Cuarón and the entire family can build a life in and for each other secure in the knowledge that they need not do it all alone.

          In sum? Cultivate your memories.

          Remember, most memories are stories we tell ourselves to make sense of our world, part fact, part reconstruction, part convenient forgetting. The brain actively grows and nourishes the old stories we tell about ourselves, so that we will come out looking good. Be aware of this trick, and make allowances for it. You are not always the hero or the exemplary person that you remember yourself as, nor are others always the villains you suppose they must have been.

          Some memories are sweet. Harvest them. Enjoy them. Let them sustain you. Don’t worry too much about how accurate they are, so long as they are true who you want to be.

          Other memories are bitter. You might want to prune these, in spite of the work it requires, discarding those that don’t somehow help make you a happier or wiser person, but meanwhile, not forgetting them so much that you cannot hang on to the critical lessons and insights you gained in spite of the pain. Other memories are a subtle mix of sweet and bitter, as when Jesus said, “Do this in remembrance of me.”

          Finally, some memories influence us even though we are hardly aware of them—like poisons or fertilizer under the soil. These memories—whether they are the sort that fluff us up or bring us down—these memories are especially tricky. But here’s a hint.

          If someone you love or trust suggests that you should explore these past events, or if you recognize that sometimes you are unaccountably emotionally triggered by people or events all out of proportion to what was intended, or if large parts of your life are barely remembered, take a risk and see a counselor who can explore these kinds of memories with you. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. And, it is just possible that you might get to know yourself in a whole new, and more whole way. Don’t think of counselling as just medicine for the psyche—think of it as exercise for the psyche.

          I loved this movie. Not so much because I understood Alfonso Cuarón better at the end. But this movie challenged me to be honest with myself and to take responsibility for the memories that will shape my life unawares if I don’t pay attention.

Homo Narrans: How Our Penchant for Stories Fills all Theological Gaps

       Instead of spending a great deal of time and energy learning the stories that were handed down to us, these days people are more likely to make up their own stories. In fact, whether or not they receive stories from others, we all love to make up stories, and live by them. Some of these stories are believable, some are not, and some might even be (more or less) true to fact.

       For example, years ago I wrote a note to myself about something I saw walking home from work. My route took me past a small cemetery on Kalamazoo Ave., in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Very near the sidewalk, almost begging to be noticed, were three simple stones. The epitaphs read “Francis B. Whitney, 1886-1960;” “Nora Whitney, 1891-1928;” and finally, “Baby Whitney, 1917.”

       A bright spray of flowers planted at the head of Baby Whitney’s stone caught my eye. I’m not much of a gardener, so I can’t tell you what kind of flowers they were. It did occur to me, though, that it was too early in the spring for flowers to bloom. Looking closer, I realized that they were made of silk. They were white, blue, and shades between. They contrasted sharply against the brown grass.

       As I walked home, I wondered about those flowers. Baby Whitney had died eighty years earlier. Her parents (I’ve always thought of her as a girl—not sure why) were also both long dead. Who remembered her so tenaciously, so long after her death, and after such a short life? So my mind went to work. Could it be that a brother or sister, maybe an only sibling, left the flowers? Perhaps this person had an unwitting hand in Baby Whitney’s death, and was atoning for that—a house fire where a slightly older sibling escaped but left the baby behind. Maybe this sibling still struggled with guilt. Maybe this sibling had been returning here, for years, to atone. Perhaps this sibling’s whole life had been shaped by a nagging sense that he or she couldn’t ever do enough to get things right. Survivor’s guilt can be traumatic. It can weigh heavy. “That must be it!” I thought.

       And then it occurred to me to wonder why I would make up stories about a little girl dead eighty years.

         The answer, of course, is that making up stories is what humans do. In my last column, I suggested this penchant for making up personal stories might be one reason that so many people don’t bother with learning much about what their churches teach, the narratives they officially emphasize, or the confessions they make.

       We’d rather make up and live in our own stories. Watch children at play. They are usually acting out stories, often stopping to step out of character just long enough to clarify the plot lines. “This stick is a bazooka, okay?” or “Jenny, hide from the alien behind that tree. Let’s pretend that’s where the our elf-base is.”

       Stories are the woof and warp of our every waking moment. By some measures we have as many as two thousand daydreams a day. Many are story snippets. We write and read novels and poems, watch TV (and vicariously live the lives of their stars) and play MMORPG games like World of Warcraft. We set up our Google newsfeed to get only the stories we want—never mind what is really important in the world.

       We sit down for supper with our family, after a long day at work, to tell each other stories about our day, always making sure to elicit sympathy and understanding by how we tell them. So, sometimes even unawares, we embellish, we portray ourselves in a slightly different and usually better light than the people who actually witnessed the event might remember. We cast others in roles, including the role of antagonist.

       Some studies even suggest that some kinds of depression may be linked to the inability to gently reshape our worlds in this way. This depression is caused by being too honest with ourselves about our stories, an inability to see ourselves as the sort of heroes we’d like to be around the supper table. The truth hurts. We need creative, truth-stretching stories to get by.

       In his book The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human, Jonathan Gottschall discusses at some length all the reasons that social scientists, communication gurus, and even biologists have come up with to explain our penchant for stories. One recurring theme is that stories—from nightmares to child’s play to the novels we read—are all a way for us to rehearse and prepare for real life. Gottschall argues that the bottom line, though, is that we make up stories because our minds are allergic to uncertainty, randomness, and lack of meaning. We are always looking for the pattern that makes sense of things. “If the storytelling mind cannot find meaningful patterns in the world, it will try to impose them. In short, the storytelling mind is a factory that churns out true stories when it can, but will manufacture lies when it can’t” (Kindle Location 1246). His book is replete with examples. CNN's coverage of the disappearance of Air Malaysia's Flight 370 is a recent case in point. Judging, I guess, that any story was better than the regular news, CNN provided round the clock coverage of one theory after another, often spending inordinate amounts of time ruminating on wild conspiracy theories. It was a too good dozen or so stories to pass up.

          The truth of a story isn't nearly as important as whether or not its a good story. In fact, polls show that a many as 36% of Americans still believe that America was, somehow, complicit in the 9/11 attacks. Gottschall also notes that a recent Harris poll showed that 24% of Republicans think President Obama might be the antichrist. And in 2010 one third of Republicans believed that Obama was a stealth Muslim himself, while 45% believed he was not born in the United States. And so it goes with the Kennedy assassination, the UN-One-World-Government plot, and various wild theories about how a secret council of Jews is running the world, and the divine plot to wipe out the earth’s population with a flood. We make up such stories, says Gottschall, because “they provide nothing less than a solution to the problem of evil.”

    

       Humans may need stories to make sense of their lives and the world, but they can only rarely, and then with great effort, get their stories straight. And this must have a huge impact on how we interact with the church, with its teachings, and whether we much care if the beliefs and teachings agree with our sense of how things really are.

       So not only do people read less today (my last column) and read less deeply with less understanding, they also make up great stories to fill in what’s missing. The church may teach salvation by grace, but people think, “I’ve been a pretty good person. I’ll get into heaven when I die.” They are especially prone to thinking so when they’ve spent their whole lives embellishing the truth about themselves and not realizing it! The church may teach that sex is primarily for having babies, but people make up stories for themselves about how they could never live that way and get ahead. The church may teach that Old Testament characters all contributed something to God’s great plan of redeeming the world through Jesus, but Sunday School teachers still teach, “Dare to be a Daniel.” The church may teach that we need to pick up crosses and follow Jesus, but when we strike it rich we tell each other that it just goes to show that God helps those who help themselves.

       These examples just scratch the surface. Karma, reincarnation, channeling, dream catchers, the right to “life, liberty and happiness” or the Bill of Rights, and on and on—people incorporate these syncretistic elements into their personal faiths all the time. They are (to adapt Peter Berger’s famous phrase) always socially reconstructing the faith of their fathers (and mothers) to suit themselves. And they don’t really care what Barth or Berkhouwer or Bavink might say because they’ve stopped reading that stuff anyway—as have most of their pastors. What is more, you add this penchant for personal story telling to the individualism of today, the mistrust of institutions and priests, along with the difficulty most people have with really studying such matters—and we don’t even know the story the hymn writer thought we’d tell in glory.

       In sum, we don’t know much about the religious traditions we’re a part of, and many of us don’t stop to reflect on that, or much care. We know how to make it up as we go, after all.