the New Pantagruel

On What is Not Forgotten

by James V. Schall, S. J.

“‘All manner of things shall be well’; for He wills that we be aware that the least little thing shall not be forgotten.” –Julian of Norwich¹

“But there is in a very real sense the presence of the absence of God.” –G. K. Chesterton²

“The chief wonder of education is that it does not ruin everybody concerned in it, teachers and taught.” –Henry Adams³

I.

he great passage on memory is found in Augustine’s Confessions. Our memory gives us the assurance that we exist over time, something that makes us wonder if our existence belongs only to time, whether also a completeness hovers about it. We remember a heavy snow fall across from our grandmother’s house by the railroad tracks in Eagle Grove when we were about six. We, the same person, also recall the fright at looking back down the just climbed pyramid outside Mexico City when we were about forty-two. We wondered how the Aztecs ever managed to walk, heads up, down these sheer, deep steps, at least those who came down walking. It is not possible that any other person in the history of the world ever has had these two memories together in the same person in the same way, especially, with much embarrassment, recalling the need to crawl on one’s stomach to descend at all. The Aztecs did not put safety railings on their pyramids, nor do the Mexicans. The memory lasts, my memory.

“Therefore, I remember that I have remembered, just as, if I recall the fact that at this time I have been able to remember these things, it will be through the power of memory that I so recall it,” Augustine wrote in book ten of the Confessions. He added, “this same memory contains also the affections of my mind. It contains them not in the manner in which the mind itself experiences them at their time, but in another very different way…. For without being joyful I remember myself to have experienced joy, and without being sad I call to mind my past sadness; without fear I remember that of which I was once afraid….” We abide over time. Joy and sadness we recall. We put our experiences into a particular place. We do not forget them. Without fear, even with laughter, we recall being frightened of the downward incline from Teotihuacán. In retrospect, it looks differently, but we know we were there. Without fear, we remember that we were afraid to do what any Aztec apparently did every day.

Aristotle asks the perceptive question: “whether we would want our friends to be someone else, kings or gods?” He thinks not. The whole point of a friend is that he is not ourselves, that he is who he is. Our memory of past events sometimes can incite us to ask the same question of ourselves. Would we want to be someone else? Aristotle takes it for granted that the answer to this latter question, in every case, is “no.” We would not, on thinking it out, want to be someone else. The old spiritual masters used to tell us that we should be very cautious about wanting someone else’s life, about envying their wealth, beauty, intelligence, or condition. We do not know really what they have to cope with. It is wiser to stick with the lot we are given, not to pine for the one that someone else is given. When St. Paul was bemoaning his lot, which does not appear to have been easy, he was told, “My grace is sufficient for thee.” Not even God wants us to be someone else other than who we are. As to what we are, we are not beings of our own making. The alternative to ourselves is not someone else, but nothing else.

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