One corollary of living in the information age is that we also live in the forgetting age. Part of this is nature. With access to so much more knowledge today, however much of it meaningless, the amount that any particular person can permanently remember is proportionally reduced. Part of it is also nurture—the more we can depend on Google to answer our questions, the less need we have to develop the memory skills we once had, and the more easily we forget things. Example: before the advent of smart phones with stored contact lists, we used to commit a significant number of phone numbers to memory. How many people could you dial from memory today? (For Peter Tonguette on landlines, see page 64.)
Past a certain point, forgetfulness can mean losing touch with who we are. Who we are as people is determined not only by what we do, by whom we meet, and whose lives we affect, but by our ability to remember these things as well. When we pass by a friend without recognizing his face or forget to send a thank-you note, these little forgetfulnesses take away from us a real part of what makes us good: our living relation to others. (For Charles Taylor on finding meaning in life, see page 40.)
For what is memory but the soul’s interior landscape? It is the ground upon which our identity is constructed, the soil in which our character grows. To forget is to lose a part of oneself—a part of how we each understand ourselves, the stories of our souls—as well. It is said that the past is a different country, but the landscape is to us its past, too. (For Matthew Walther on further fine distinctions, see page 51.)
As it is with others, it is even more so with the world around us. The physical spaces we live in gain by our living in them, but only insofar as they become repositories of memory, carriers of history. Every book I read I remember not only for its contents but for where I was when I read it, and where on the shelf I found it. (For Steven Knepper on the death of browsing, see page 55.)
Though we forget, our hope is in God’s remembrance. His covenants with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are forgotten by the Israelites, but not by Him. The Psalmist cries out to the Lord confident that He will not forget His suffering servant.
