Remember Us For Good

We had just driven across the country in a blue conversion van. This vehicle, my father decided, was the best way to get from New Jersey to Washington. But let me be clear. When my father arrived in the driveway, I fell deeply in love with our new 1994 Dodge RAM Wagon B250. My family and I spent a week driving through what felt like the wilderness – turns out it was just the Midwest – but I made the most of my time. A small television and Legos, and an ample amount of time to build blanket forts and gaze out the window. And to help you better visualize this scenario, I've brought along this: 

 However, one fateful day, we ran into a minor catastrophe. It was Rosh Hashanah morning. And as I'm sure most of you know, preparing for services is an ordeal. The hustle and bustle of waking up, ironing shirts, and khaki pants. Do we have the tickets? The machzorim? The talitot? Who is going to get stuck sitting next to the stranger for 5 hours? The whole uproar already put me in a bit of an anxious mood. And so, just as we picked up grandma and made our way into downtown Seattle – we eventually arrived at the parking garage. And as we were driving up from one floor to the other, my father made a bold decision. One that would make its way into his son's sermon. You see, he underestimated the HEIGHT of this conversion van. And unfortunately, a water pipe – or whatever pipe – well, it wedged us. People were honking. Cars piled up behind us, waiting to get in. Dad got out of the car, trying to measure how to maneuver without either busting the pipe or ripping off the roof. Mom was mad. Grandma was annoyed. Some other dads arrived to perform some dad calculations as if they were all now suddenly all physics majors. We were literally the reason people were late for services. I was beyond embarrassed, and we hadn't even made it into shul yet. 

And in the course of a few minutes, my beloved blanket fort medium had fallen from grace. Because now this van – this tall, obnoxious van – became the source of overwhelming anxiety. My tzuris. The Yiddish word for distress. And just a small caveat, the word tzuris, comes from the Hebrew word tzar, meaning confined or narrowed. So, I am reasonably sure that getting stuck under a pipe is the literal definition of tzuris. Eventually, we got the van out by the way. Just to put you at ease. But that part of the story I don't remember quite as well. And there may be a perfectly fine explanation for that. But I'll come back to it in a moment. 

Every year before the holidays, I reminisce over the discomfort of that morning. And what's bizarre about my reflection of that morning is that the 10/15 minutes sitting in that backseat resonant more than the 50 something-hours driving from shore to shore. But those painful moments in the parking garage are clear as daylight. Further, I don't think it's just me, or an unusual coincidence that my painful memories cling to my psyche more so than the good ones. That I more clearly remember pain over pleasure. That tzuris, trouble, and worry, resonate deeper in my memory than joyful experiences. This notion has always lingered with me and recently I got to the bottom of it. According to Sandford Professor Clifford Nass:

"The brain handles positive and negative information in different hemispheres…Negative emotions generally involve more thinking, and the information is processed more thoroughly than positive ones. Thus, we tend to ruminate more about unpleasant events — and use stronger words to describe them — than happy ones."

FSU Professor Roy F. Baumeister further explains that "Bad emotions, bad parents and bad feedback have more impact than good ones. Bad impressions and bad stereotypes are quicker to form and more resistant to disconfirmation than good ones. Losing money, being abandoned by friends and receiving criticism will have a greater impact than winning money, making friends or receiving praise…Put another way, you are more upset about losing $50 than you are happy about gaining $50," Baumeister's Research concludes. [1] 

 Some go so far as to say that this [principle of memory] "has evolutionary roots; that is: It's more important for people, for survival, to notice the lion in the brush than it is to notice the beautiful flower that's growing on the other side of the way." [2] 

What I've come to learn in my short thirty-three years on this planet is something straightforward: Everything comes with its ups and downs. It's merely the case that pleasure and pain and inseparable entities. The nature of our connection with things and people is circumstantial. A rule of thumb that's stuck with me recently is this: Things are good until they aren't. Moreover, the pebble of one bad experience is far heftier, more potent than a colossal boulder of an enjoyable experience. It's not fair. But that's how it is. 

 This is why how we choose to remember events, people, and experiences - how we choose to tell the story of our own lives - is so very important. Even more of an uphill battle is how we recall the memory of others. As we look towards Yom Kippur even, we face the weight of painful memories collated in our minds. We attempt the process of forgiveness. And as some of us have experienced, forgiving those who are no longer living can be even more challenging than if they were alive. After all, legacies are fragile things. It only takes a small crack for someone's narrative to come crashing down. One bad mistake. Which is why the difficutly of remeberance is one that we all face. What to do with the good, the bad, and the ugly. 

 Beginning on Rosh Hashanah, we begin repeating the following words:

…זָכְרֵנוּ ה' אֱלהֵינוּ בּו לְטובָה [Eternal our God, Remember us for Good] 

Throughout our days of awe, we continually ask God and others to remember. Remember us. Remember us for good. We even devote a unique shofar service to remembrance. Zichronot. And as the gates close on Yom Kippur, we again ask God to be remembered for safety, well-being, and favor. To be recognized for our love and compassion. We ask God to seal these memories. Bind them. Solidify them so that they cannot be undone. 

 Because after all, it's not God who remembers more clearly the bad and harm we've caused. It's our friends, family, colleagues, children, and parents. As our commentator's remark, "To apply the verb 'remember' to God is an obvious anthropomorphism; we cannot suppose that God literally forgets and recalls information, as we do." and in case you missed that last part, I'll repeat it: "As we do." Because we, human beings, our memories are geared toward pessimism. We can't help remembering the bad. It's in our blood. It's how we work, how we think. In the grand scheme of thing's, I would prefer God as my juror than my peers quite honesty. 

As the years pass, we all have a choice to make. How we choose to remember others. And the choices that define how we will be remembered. The scales are not weighted in anybody's favor. That much is certain. Which is why, we have to work that much harder to actually be good. To be remembered for the Good we did in this world. We have to work that much harder to remember others for their good qualities – their good deeds, as well. This is the task at hand— the task of remembrance.