One of the quietest lines in Mama Namibia has stayed with me for years.
“I cling to every moment, wanting each one to last…”
Jahohora says this after she has survived. Not in the middle of the crisis – after. In the ordinary moments, when she realizes that ordinary moments are what she almost never got to have.
That is the survivor’s paradox. You fight so hard to live, and when you live, you feel the weight of every ordinary second.
In the days since Remembrance Day, I find myself doing something similar. Clinging to what it meant. Wanting it to last. Resisting the pull back toward comfortable forgetting.
The work of memory is not one day a year. It is a practice. A daily choice.
Thank you for making that choice this month.
What moment from history — or from your own life — do you find yourself returning to?
PHOTO: Herero gathering around a holy fire in 2013. Moments like these are the ones we cling to.