This writer’s life, like probably most other people whose lives that exceed a certain number of years has been eventful without being exceptional. My spouse of 53 years, it happens, comes from a family that hand wrote letters to each other in an unbroken stream. She and her mother saved almost all letters, newspaper articles, greeting cards, and awards, from childish scrawls to formal accolades, in storage.  What has emerged is a life review record on hard copy.  But that stream of hand made connections surprisingly nearly dried up with the emergence of the internet and computer communications in later midlife.  They say “the devil is in the details“.  Guess what? The angels are also found in the details. In fact as we sort through that hand written detailed first two thirds of our life, it seems everything of value is in critical details, often long forgotten or suppressed.  

The gossamer a two dimensional illusion of human memory in the contemporary digital cloud may be coming home to haunt this nation right now.  The bulleted summaries of PowerPoint and viral memes have only riddled life memories with holes lacking the revealing detail and actual poetry of life struggles. It turns out important that they lack the accompanying emotionally charged, revealing long hand, writing along with illustrations. The true fully human dimension of life is conserved in a muliti-sensory system of physical memory.  The digital universal as memory has unwittingly laid the groundwork for the dissolving of what history we had into fiction.  We are witnessing the death of history on a grand scale in this nation with this president and administration.  News is largely no longer new or news.  News has devolved into a war of history revisions and deletions.  In physical memory we know certain things like January 6 happened and certain convictions in court (where memory is disciplined and documented) occurred.  But the news cycles and social media systems encourage and demand we forsake our memory of true history and subscribe to the revised political meta-fiction.  We are now living without a reliable history in this time and this nation’s plummeting mental health reflects that deficit.

A Modest Proposal for Good

The paper trail my spouse and her mother left this family is a treasure beyond measure.  I will address this proposal for good to the younger generations.  Leave a paper trail and write in full whole hearted sentences long handed.  Print if you must. You can’t imagine now the future importance to you of this history you can leave from the end of pen, or pencil on good paper.  If you are fortunate enough to live into full adulthood, you will not regret the effort.  Learn to tell yourself the truth about yourself as best you can.  You may already be feeling the emptiness of the digital meta-fiction and living out a phantom sadness sans true history. Fiction serves only two functions for history: 1) a practice ground for finding fitting words to express the dynamic world of feelings, and 2) a record of true witness of your own struggling integrity.  Your true history will likely be a bit painful and encouraging at the same time. Don’t let the hucksters of greatness and perfection distract you from the beauty of your own imperfect struggle and achievements.  You won’t feel perfect with the truth of yourself, but you can feel whole.  That is not only good, but wholeness is the lamp that illuminates your history and dispels the darkness.