It’s hard to avoid the political furore over the apparently honorable Hone Harawira’s rather interesting outbursts of late. I have to say I am surprised by both what was said and my own response to it. It’s all very well claiming that MP’s ought not make racist remarks, but Harawira is far from the first to do so. The only real difference is the aggression with which he did it.
Yet what drives the remarks we make? Why do we apologise for one set of comments and then bury ourselves with another? Because memory of the past still has power in the present.
A Mäori proverb says, ‘you spend your life walking backwards because you can see the past but not the future – that's why we trip’. There’s some debate about whether the proverb encourages living life that way or warns against it. However I can see that both have their benefit. What it does tell us is that how we attend to our memories of the past will map something of the way will live in the present and therefore mould the future.
Most of us carry memories of past experiences that that have affected us in some way. The problem is our modern culture has reduced our capacity to remember things with any clarity. In fact we have trouble remembering events from only a few days, or a month ago. We are glued, if you like, to this ever-shifting changing present, so we feel like our memory is slipping away from us. Thus we hang onto what we can because we believe that those memories define who we truly are.
But is our memory honest? Is it a true account? Is it multifaceted enough to be trusted to shape our self understanding?
Much of the conflict in the world, whether it be individual or between communities, is fuelled by memories of the past. On one hand memory preserves our self-identity and on the other it protects from allowing certain events to ever happen again. Miroslav Volf from Yale University points out, “the shield of memory turns too easily into a sword.”
So how do we handle our memories in such a way that they bring life rather than mutating into something that destroys? Well, for starters, it’s learning to remember rightly. At this point I wear a Christian hat.
Over the years I have had people do and say things to me that have been destructive. I remember these things all too clearly. However, I remember them through a biblical lens. These acts were by people for whom Jesus Christ died, just as he did for me. In that sense I know I am not an innocent; I have no right to bask in self-righteousness. It’s not that I’m diminishing the effect of others actions, I don’t. It’s ‘how’ I remember them that affects my present.
If memory is a lens through which we interpret the past, what lens do you stare through? One that brings life, or one that enhances bitterness and pain? Choose the lens carefully; the flowering of your life depends on it.
Digby Wilkinson 2009