Local View: Scars help us learn; keep Confederate statues.
There has been a recent trend in the wake of the Charlottesville events to call for removal of items that serve to memorialize elements of the Civil War Confederacy. A notion exists that having constant reminders of the darkest elements of our past somehow serves as an ongoing endorsement of that past.
The city of Baltimore took this to an extreme. A clandestine and sweeping overnight action called for removal of all Confederate statues and memorials from around the city.
I find these behaviors disdainful. Not because I am white. Not because I am from the South. Not because I am racist — which I’m not. No, I find the behaviors reproachable because, in truth, I have a fondness for ugly things. I want to keep ugly things around me.
As a physician, I am all too aware that human memory for traumatic and painful events is very short. People seem hardwired to forget those things that have hurt them the most. Shooting victims, people injured in car accidents, and even laboring women all have hazy recollections of these often life-defining events. While the explanation for this is unclear, this reality is well supported.
Somewhat paradoxically, I am also certain that my greatest lessons in this life have come during times of difficulty. When I look at the lessons that have shaped who I am today, none of these lessons have come from a polite coffeeshop exchange. Most have not been learned even from books. No, the greatest lessons from my life have come from taking a good, hard look at the ugliness inside of myself, the ugliness inside of others.
You see, staring at ugliness is difficult. It’s hard to watch a human die and know that you are powerless to ease her suffering. It’s hard to watch your wife cry and know its because you said harsh words that you can’t take back.
But sadly, we learn nothing by turning away. Looking in the other direction does help us forget, but doing so also removes any potential for getting better.
I firmly believe that we form scars for a reason. We cannot easily take them off or remove them. My view is that this is nature’s way of making us confront ugliness to avoid the mistakes of the past. Where I used to shy away from ugly things, now I make a deliberate effort to stare at them a second longer than is comfortable. Perhaps there is a lesson to be found in the darkness.
I protest the removal of these Confederate statues. Let us not pretend our history was one of utopia. Keep these ugly markers. Look at them. Look often. Don’t forget that before we could be successful, we failed.