Fuggetaboutit

By Jay Floyd

As a loyal reader of this blog since it's inception, I must say that I usually enjoy coming here every day.

Brawls break out over divergent views on sexism, racism and homophobia. Fine. Brawls are sometimes productive, and my horizons have broadened along the way by being in the midst of them.

Then comes an often repeated phrase; one that makes me squint when I read it:

"We'll never forget!"

It's meant to be a cry of solidarity...but in what? It's a phrase that converts We The People into We The Wronged, and it is poisonous.

resentment
noun
bitter indignation at having been treated unfairly

It's no coincidence that the word 'bitter' is right there in the definition, up front.

On it's face, 'never forgetting' suggests that 'we've learned a hard lesson and won't be victims again'. But I've noticed that it's meaning goes much deeper for many here in Raptureland. It often seems to be a declaration of victim identity insidiously dressed up as valor, the result of which is to degrade everything and everyone that it invades. Unsurprisingly, it is also the wellspring of rabid partisanship---yet another wolf in patriot's clothing. It is a prayer to the very attentive and generous god of Rage.

Hillary was the best candidate, but she lost. It was wrong.

Chicago Slim won the election for embarrassingly superficial reasons. It was wrong.

Palin was ridiculed because she is a beautiful woman not only striving for but sitting in power. It was wrong.

Prop 8 won on the ballot in California. It was wrong.

Clearly, none of us will ever actually forget any of these events. They're riveting assertions of our existence at exactly this time in exactly this place. So what does it mean when we write, "We will never forget!"

That we will never actually forget goes without saying, so it must mean something more. The energy behind it is most likely, "We will never forgive!"... and that's not good for you, me, the country or the various issues that most of us want to coax into tangible advancement.

Cling to a wrong long enough and it becomes a part of you, like a scar on your personality. And yes, scars are stronger than the undamaged skin they replace... but they're no longer properly functioning parts of the body. One medical website says of scar tissue, "Although it takes the place of damaged or destroyed tissue, it is limited in function, including movement, circulation, and sensation."

This isn't who we strive to be, is it?

I'd like to suggest that 'forgetting' would actually be more productive than trudging knee deep in resentment, but I suppose that depends on who you want to be in this world.

Make no mistake -- I have battled with this very demon all of my adult life. I can report without any fear of being exposed as a fraud that my most noteworthy accomplishments all grew from having let go of the ways in which I've been wronged. The past screams and yells at me to live in it, but in intermittent moments of grace I can successfully ignore it's clamor.

It's surprising how much ignoring looks like forgetting.

Jay Floyd