Fickle memory

The dead often live beyond the grave. Long after their bones have crumbled into dust, their words, deeds and images still remain in that most personal of history’s repositories: memory. But memory is a strange thing, capable of shifting from unwavering to fickle. Even more dangerous is when this shift happens to collective memory.

People remember events in different ways, from various perspectives. One man may remember a robbery from the viewpoint of the victim, another from the criminal’s, another from that of the police. While one man may recall the fear thrumming through his body as a gun is pointed at his temple, another may recall the cold mass of the gun in his hands, and yet another may recall the sound of gunshots.

Memory itself is a testament to the uniqueness of the human experience. In many ways, it forms the basis for much of the collective truths we know and acknowledge today: Water is wet. The Pope is Catholic. Dictators are not revered.

And yet memory, like many things in the world this year, can become poisoned, too. Why does it happen? Is it because we’ve become disillusioned by the reality that came after? Propaganda? The people in power? The sprouting seeds of doubt that maybe we may have remembered wrong? History, after all, is written by the victors. I can’t begin to say, nor can I begin to understand, what is happening. Everywhere, we students work through countless nights of study, immerse ourselves in books and busy bubbles in the belief that one day, all the effort is going to be worth it. Our generation is in many ways cynical, but in many other ways idealistic. We believe that through education, we can improve our lives and our society. We also believe that, just as we will work to improve the institutions of society, these institutions will also be there to help us. But what is the point when the very institutions that are supposed to protect our faiths and values shake them instead?

The sins of today do not negate the sins of the past, just as the sins of one man do not negate the sins of another. “Forgiveness” is not the same as “honoring.” The symbolism of burying a human rights violator in a place which has heroism as its name is a slap on everyone’s face. Healing cannot be achieved by force and the betrayal of the very transparency that is the hallmark of every society. It certainly cannot be achieved by flaunting triumph in the faces of those who will not forget—or worse, in the faces of those who cannot forget, because the scars are too deep in their minds and bodies.

I have questions to which I have no answers. I struggle to understand the reasoning of the opposite side. Still, I’d like to have hope. Memory is fickle, but in those for whom it burns constant, it is powerful. It is expressed in symbols, actions, language. Our words and deeds are our own, and only those with something to fear from an informed, outspoken populace would dare take it away.

While the dead often live beyond the grave, we must remember them as they were in life. When we look back, when the history books speak of this day, I can only hope that they speak of it as the day democracy wept but rose from the ashes. Till then, write. Speak. Be informed. Hope. Even the darkest of nights break eventually.

Mia Larainne L. Dueñas, 24, is in her third year at Ateneo de Manila Law School.