the scrap yard

I have a confession to make.

I am a salvage freak – a persistent nostalgic who celebrates antique shops, museums, and especially second-hand bookstores. There is a remarkable sense of history in the old and the used that I absolutely love. There in the scrap yard, I feel so alive, so present...

Amid tokens of the past, I remember not to forget.

I am a certified, dyed-in-the-wool junkyard junkie.

While we live in a time impatiently dashing towards the next, I am perpetually caught up between a state of slow motion and suspended animation.

But this is not a discourse about me and my romantic attachment to the past.

This is about the many things we are so eager to throw away in the waste dumps of our lives. Ours is a world plagued by a long-term, short-term memory loss; keen to move on without resolving issues of the here and now. There is a sinister anti-sentimental sentiment that pervades every aspect of our realities: we readily throw objects for the latest, and within the same breath complain that things are not the way they used to be. We so willingly burn bridges, and under the same lifetime demand for meaningful and lasting connections.

Maybe that’s why we never seem to be going anywhere… Indeed, for us individually, and collectively as a society, we need a sense of history to navigate us towards our true destination. It is our life-stories that define us and give us a sense of purpose and direction. The past is our anchor in the storm, and our compass in the calm. And if we keep discarding our yesterdays in our desperation to move on and start anew, we will lose ourselves in the process.

Remember that dream, the one that once left you breathless just thinking about it? How about that singular passion that used to fire you into an insatiable hunger for beauty and justice? Have you lost the idealism that that once drove you to acts of self-sacrifice? What about that sweet, secret longing that once stoked you into gentleness and generosity of spirit? Remember that person who used to be so idealistic, so unafraid… Where have they all gone?

We so easily forget.

But we can always remember again.

Things do not really die as much as they fade from our collective consciousness. We bury them in the rubble, but they still manage to take root and find the sun. Maybe if we can find time to sift through the debris that has cluttered our structured lives, we will find a garden abloom with rediscovered joys.

Have you been to your mind’s attic lately? Indeed, you might find some ruins that must finally be thrown away. But, there too among cobwebbed relics are dreams waiting to be dreamt again; there are passions waiting to be rekindled; pains waiting to be acknowledged; and ghosts waiting to be recognized. There, in the eternal junkyards of your mind, is a person that you once were and wanted to be. There, in the shadows, is a you that needs to be unforgotten. Let us not be yoked to a life void of memory, bitter or otherwise. Remembrance is eternal spring in the winters of our discontent.

Remember anything you have forgotten lately?

Go visit your scrap yards and rekindle what remains.

Just like what I have done with this article.

Just like what I hope to do with this life.