Time doesn't destroy the past, it diminishes the intensity, and, in that diminishment the present loses it's impact also. There seems to be a correlation between the passing years and the multitude of occurrences and the slipping significance of past and present events.

Think back:

When Buddy Holly died, a generation mourned, but then came Janis, and Elvis, Jim Croce, and the rest. When John Lennon was shot, we mourned the loss of the songs, but found ourselves unsurprised by the violence and lose of life.

The country was enmeshed in World War II, we worried, we suffered, we agonized. Korea came, a forgotten war, we tried not to pay attention. Viet Nam saw us go a step further, we scorned it, and those that participated. The Gulf War found us using it as a bandstand, the war, and all that 'war' stands for became insignificant...we found ourselves hyping the patriotism. And, in the meantime, we pushed even further away the heroes of the past.

Our own youth, so important when we were 5 or 10, or even 16, has become a clutch of fond memories at best. We push aside the impact those early years had..They amuse us, we trade memories like baseball cards, we chuckle about them with old friends in late night conversations.

What's diminished in those memories, they seem so vivid, so real....The pain is missing, the tragedy of lost puppies. The intense joy has left those memories, we remember the bike, but not the day we got it, shiny, new, it would last forever. The smell of a summer afternoon, the cool wash of a stream, the mist of a humid evening after a storm.

It's surprising that we've lost those portions of who we once were..because they are exactly what formed who we are now. As we lose, as we forget, as we minimize the importance, we also give away part of the present. Our minds can't justify the importance of today as it denies the significance of yesterday.

Crabby old men- they've lost all of yesterday, and with it, today has become nothing as well.

© Robert Coller, 1996