We remember not to live in the past, but to carry its lessons forward. Memory is a responsibility, not a burden.
A society that forgets its dead, forgets its mistakes, and forgets the small ordinary kindnesses it has received — that society loses the thread. It begins to invent itself anew each morning, untethered from anything that might temper its arrogance.
The practice of remembering is the practice of staying human. We light candles. We speak names. We tell the old stories. We do these things not because the past was better, but because the past has something to teach the present, if we are still enough to hear.
Forgetting is fashionable. Memory is the harder, slower, more honest work.