Memorial Day, Remember & Reflect
Outside of the military or those connected to the military in some way, not many people notice Memorial Day except as a day off (if you’re lucky) from the salt mines however that might look. During my decades as a corporate beast, that’s how I treated it (though alas, I often worked). The meaning of the day went no further than having a much-needed holiday. I’ve never much thought about it, but this is my first Memorial Day post-exit from the corporate grind. Between WW II and the Civil War, over 1 million soldiers died. Several hundred thousand others died in other conflicts from the Revolutionary War to Iraq. Many who survived did so with life-altering injuries and mental illnesses haunting them for the rest of their days. Many survivors today carry a weight that never gets lighter.
An overwhelming percentage of the casualties belonged to men in their early to mid-twenties. They fought for different reasons—for freedom, for home and country, because they didn’t know what else to do, others because they had no choice. For many Americans today, the idea of giving up your life especially in its prime must seem foreign if not quaint when it’s all about what I want. The concept of the me-too / look-at-me era implies that everyone is out for themselves, that inflated-ego is a virtue, so the profound idea of sacrifice to the point of giving up one’s life can be difficult to understand. It contradicts what the current greater culture says about how we should show up in the world.
Today’s America has its many challenges, but it has reached a level of comfort never before achieved. We humans are prone to craving—give us money, and we want more, gives a good drug, and we want more, give us a happy meal and we want it supersized, give us power, and we want more, more, and more. Instead of being members of a community, we are individuals who inhabit the form of a community that exists to benefit the individual (not equally and not without fault) versus the other way around. Service comes in many forms, and there are ways to serve outside of the battlefield. And I’m also humbled to pause and reflect on the many lives lost in wars especially where the survival of the country was in peril. The Vietnam War, framed as an existential threat with communism posed to sweep through the world, was viewed by many as a vital part of the Cold War struggle; and I judge it to be the last war fought where America’s survival (albeit long-term) hung in the balance.
Mostly young men gave up their lives. Their motivations were varied but they largely fought for freedom and country. So it’s Memorial Day—a time to pause, reflect, and remember the many people who gave up their everything for the sake of others.
