November 30, 2009
This Old House
Abandoned and forgotten, how many years will it be before this old house is an empty lot? How many years after that will it be erased from human memory? Just like this old house, we will grow old and die, most of us will be forgotten.
I’m not for sure how I feel about that. I’m torn between not caring and some sort of subconscious desire to be important. Do I want people to remember me? Or maybe the question should be, why do I want people to remember me?
Some days go by, and I think nothing of it; just another Monday. Other days, I lie awake at night, wondering what this life is all about. It’s like I’m on a long hike, plodding, one foot after another, my momentum carrying me forward. And it’s only after I stop and take a look around, that continuing on becomes difficult.
I have always had this fear that some day I would grow complacent. That I would be happy with my lot in life. That I would stop progressing. Does that mean that I can never be happy, never be satisfied?
I know I’m not the first to ask these questions, but I feel like I am among the few. I just don’t see the point in going to school, getting a job, having a couple of kids, finally retiring, and then dying. Maybe I’m just lucky to have the chance to ask these questions. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, I guess.
Rationale tells me that yes, someday I will die, someday I will be forgotten. Just like this old house, forgotten and abandoned. Now I just have to get used to the idea.
Even after seeing it many times, the next-to-last picture with the pot in the window, haunts me. It forces me to consider the life of the people who once lived, cooked and dined in that very house instead of just appreciating the beauty of the rusted hinges and weather-worn wood.
Cheer up, emo kid!
After looking at the pics of the “old house”, memories started flooding my mind. As you know my family lived in this house when I was 8 years old. This house left a definite imprint on my brain, because when I looked at the pics it was a moment of reliving some of the past. During the time that we lived there, which was approx. 3 years the following events occured. My sister was born, my brother had appendicitis, I went trick or treating for the first and last time, I had my first experience of cooking soup beans, I had a friend to stay the night for the first time, I went fishing with my brother on the creek bank during the summer and helped him clean frogs at night, played house with an old car steering wheel in the summer under a makeshift canopy held up by tobacco sticks, got my first barbie doll for Christmas, babysit for my sister while my parents were stripping tobacco at night, and various other memories that are too much to write in your blog. My point being, although this looks like an old house to you that has been abandoned, it’s not just an old abandoned house to others. Life is an evolving process and memories are etched into everyone’s brain by something, place or person at different times of their lives. I don’t know anyone who has all the answers to life and if there is more to life than getting up and going to bed at night. I do feel that as long as we share life with our family and friends that memories are created and as long as those memories are shared from generation to generation they will never be forgotten. This old house may eventually be torn down, but it will always be a memory etched in my brain until I die and now it’s etched into yours. Happy thinking…..
Mom, I understand that memories persist as long as we do, but someday we too will turn to dust and our memories with them. How many generations do your memories go back? I remember my great grandparents, and bits and pieces of their lives, but none before that. A certain few great figures in history span the cap of centuries, and even millennia, but someday they to will be forgotten; Caesar, Alexander, Charlemagne, Jesus, Muhammad, Buddha.