Let’s do a little experiment. Take a flat map of the world, put it on a table. Flatten any wrinkles. Now, run your fingers over the great mountain systems. Feel anything? Any bumps or protrusions? No? Okay, let’s run the experiment again, this time with a relief globe, one that has mountains “sticking up” above the smooth gores of lowlands and oceans. Yep. Now you feel those little protuberances. But not by much.
I suppose there are numerous analogs for this experiment, but you and I, being on such friendly terms that you know much about what goes on inside my mind, yes, you and I, might consider just one: The bumps of tragedies on the broad world of personal history are like those mountain ranges.
Both of us have witnessed directly and indirectly numerous tragedies from the loss of loved ones to the deaths of the unknown, from destruction of cities by storm to destruction of cities by war, and from abandonment by protectors to abuses by the same. In fact, any list of tragedies runs long, and all such lists have the gaps imposed by the forgetfulness that erases the unpleasant from our memories. In short, when you and I run our figurative fingers over the spans of our lives, we cannot feel all the bumps even though we have, like constant explorers, encountered many of significant elevations. In fact, like the Andes, Rockies, and Himalaya, only the big bumps strike the nerves in those fingers.
If we were to research the days of our lives as they have been recorded by various news sources and historians, we would be hard pressed to find one without some human tragedy. The road of our lives has been bumpy, but strangely, not so much in memory. When there are many bumps, our brains look to average, to smooth. That leaves just the larger ones in our memories.
It’s a common experience to note where one was during some significant, or mountainous, event. I was in my kitchen getting a cup of coffee when terrorists crashed planes on 9-11. I was in a college hallway when I heard that President Kennedy had been shot. Those mountainous events stand above the plains of everydayness in my mind, but they are not the only highlands my mental fingers can feel. I’m sure that you also have such elevations that protrude noticeably from your mental map of history.
What intrigues me today is that in “feeling” those bumps, I have to acknowledge the inadequacy of personal scale. I assume, for example, that a young child’s pudgy little fingers can sense bigger bumps on a relief globe that my calloused old fingers can—too many cuts and bruises accumulated in my personal history (and probably in yours). I’ve become a bit insensitive in this regard because I cannot solve all the world’s problems, right all the wrongs, or smooth over the bumps in the lives of billions of other people, hundreds of millions of who undergo tragic conditions daily or almost daily. Hundreds of millions who have lived tragedies that I have experienced only indirectly, tragedies that I know only from reading, hearsay, or news reporting.
May I get emotional here? Is there a way to feel all those bumps, those elevated tragedies in the lives of others? Or should I simply flatten out the map and go on walking over an Earth’s curvature as though the world is flat?
It’s not flat, of course. And it’s not without those bumps: Cities destroyed, for example, cities like Pompeii and St. Pierre on Martinique, both destroyed by volcanic eruptions; Cities destroyed, for example, by conquest and war, like Jerusalem in the first century, Dresden, Hiroshima, and London in the twentieth century; lives lost in crimes and storms; persecutions, enslavements, impoverishments, injustices…
Of course, there are those who seem to have no feeling, no sense of touch: The insensitive that refuse to feel the bumps that lie on the map of others’ lives. Some even appear to ignore that such bumps even exist. And others appear to relish, even applaud, the tragedies of others and to look on their mountainous climb through life as entertainment, or worse, as inconsequential.
The map of the mind might be smooth and unwrinkled, but the real world is not.
I suppose there are numerous analogs for this experiment, but you and I, being on such friendly terms that you know much about what goes on inside my mind, yes, you and I, might consider just one: The bumps of tragedies on the broad world of personal history are like those mountain ranges.
Both of us have witnessed directly and indirectly numerous tragedies from the loss of loved ones to the deaths of the unknown, from destruction of cities by storm to destruction of cities by war, and from abandonment by protectors to abuses by the same. In fact, any list of tragedies runs long, and all such lists have the gaps imposed by the forgetfulness that erases the unpleasant from our memories. In short, when you and I run our figurative fingers over the spans of our lives, we cannot feel all the bumps even though we have, like constant explorers, encountered many of significant elevations. In fact, like the Andes, Rockies, and Himalaya, only the big bumps strike the nerves in those fingers.
If we were to research the days of our lives as they have been recorded by various news sources and historians, we would be hard pressed to find one without some human tragedy. The road of our lives has been bumpy, but strangely, not so much in memory. When there are many bumps, our brains look to average, to smooth. That leaves just the larger ones in our memories.
It’s a common experience to note where one was during some significant, or mountainous, event. I was in my kitchen getting a cup of coffee when terrorists crashed planes on 9-11. I was in a college hallway when I heard that President Kennedy had been shot. Those mountainous events stand above the plains of everydayness in my mind, but they are not the only highlands my mental fingers can feel. I’m sure that you also have such elevations that protrude noticeably from your mental map of history.
What intrigues me today is that in “feeling” those bumps, I have to acknowledge the inadequacy of personal scale. I assume, for example, that a young child’s pudgy little fingers can sense bigger bumps on a relief globe that my calloused old fingers can—too many cuts and bruises accumulated in my personal history (and probably in yours). I’ve become a bit insensitive in this regard because I cannot solve all the world’s problems, right all the wrongs, or smooth over the bumps in the lives of billions of other people, hundreds of millions of who undergo tragic conditions daily or almost daily. Hundreds of millions who have lived tragedies that I have experienced only indirectly, tragedies that I know only from reading, hearsay, or news reporting.
May I get emotional here? Is there a way to feel all those bumps, those elevated tragedies in the lives of others? Or should I simply flatten out the map and go on walking over an Earth’s curvature as though the world is flat?
It’s not flat, of course. And it’s not without those bumps: Cities destroyed, for example, cities like Pompeii and St. Pierre on Martinique, both destroyed by volcanic eruptions; Cities destroyed, for example, by conquest and war, like Jerusalem in the first century, Dresden, Hiroshima, and London in the twentieth century; lives lost in crimes and storms; persecutions, enslavements, impoverishments, injustices…
Of course, there are those who seem to have no feeling, no sense of touch: The insensitive that refuse to feel the bumps that lie on the map of others’ lives. Some even appear to ignore that such bumps even exist. And others appear to relish, even applaud, the tragedies of others and to look on their mountainous climb through life as entertainment, or worse, as inconsequential.
The map of the mind might be smooth and unwrinkled, but the real world is not.
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