As I finished Everything Is Illuminated for the fourth time, I became illumined yet again. Sitting at the beach I placed the book in my lap and watched the evening waves roll and crash. The roar and tumble of each wave, their perpetuity, cleared my mind.
I thought about all that has happened to bring me to this point in my life, as I am. Not just the events in my life, but also my mother's life, my father's, my brother's, my grandfather's, friends', neighbors', strangers'. I thought about all of them, everyone, before me and after me, and its impossible to think any of it is meaningless. This is not simply to say that there is an explanation for everything I've thought, said, and done - that there is/are an explanation(s) for the way/who I am. Just as it is not simply an explanation for everything I've not thought, not said, and not done. All that has occurred to make me who I am has been done so that I exist for the memory. I do not exist to keep the memory alive. I exist because the memory keeps me alive.
While I have searched my own life for these explanations, for the reasons why I write better than I speak; take comfort in solitude; wait to be questioned before I reveal, I realized that the answers are unknowable - they do not exist anymore. All that remains is me - the accumulation of past and future, of memory and remembrance, of truth and exaggeration, of hope and faith, of belief and the forgotten.
The realization is heavy. It carries responsibility. It fills me with the duty to live out each memory, whether I remember it or not, as proudly as I can. The memory of the event, any event throughout the course of time, the birth of my father or the fall of Rome, is buried within me. To ignore it or deny the memory's presence, regardless if I remember it, is to deny the event's existence and my own. This realization brings responsibility, but with responsibility comes purpose.
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