The Weekday Hump

I really should be writing my master’s thesis. I’ve placed myself in exile until the end of the quarter, when it is actually done and I can put the letters “M.A.” after my name with pride. But I wanted to write this while it is still fresh in my heart and mind.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu has a wonderful giggle.

When I first heard it at today’s roundtable discussion in Seattle on youth and compassion, I was amazed. Here is a person with a considerable amount of gravitas — a man who vehemently crusaded against apartheid, someone who mediated South Africa’s transition to democracy, the chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission — and he has a giggle? It was just so unexpected. It was very high pitched and slow — “hee hee heh heh hee.” He would giggle, and that would get the Dalai Lama started with his own low, quick laughter that made his whole body shake “ha ha ha ha ha!” Because we were all tickled with the joy in the laughter of these holy men, we laughed, too.

Love, laughter, and the divine were the themes of the day. Rabbi David Rosen, another participant in the discussion, said that we need to love ourselves in order to be able to love others. He saw this not as an egotistical thing, but as the ability to recognize the divine in ourselves. Once we recognize the divine within, we can recognize the divinity in others. This reminded me of the word “namaste,” which my yoga teacher translated as “the divine in me recognizes the divine in you.”

I wonder if my choice to live passionately is a way of recognizing the divine within me. I can’t remember if I wrote about this here or not, but after recognizing just how deeply unhappy I was last summer — in my relationships, in my graduate school program, really in my life — I listened to the voice in the back of my head telling me to make some changes. I have a tendency to overthink things (many graduate students do — we are analytical types), and realized that my brain was overruling my heart on one too many matters. What I needed to do was to live passionately — to trust my heart, to set the joyful passionate person I am free (and not compromise my passion for fear of frightening people), and to bravely jump into a brand new life. I can definitely say that it has not worked out perfectly — that I have been disappointed by things, and I know I will be disappointed by things — but I am a happier person. The path I am on will lead me to a position at a liberal arts college, where I can teach about the things that truly excite me — Eastern Europe, the history of communism, the Balkans, how societies made the transition to democracy after the Cold War. I feel like I am finally fully present on this road I travel down. I’m not simply along for the ride anymore.

Archbishop Tutu acknowledged that the path to compassion and love is not easy. We live in a world of war — a world where we must sometimes get angry. He mentioned that he gets very angry at God for letting awful things happen — in Darfur, in Burma, in Tibet. He said that he laughs easily, but he cries a lot too. Archbishop Tutu reminded us that “God does not say ‘good riddance to bad rubbish’ when we make mistakes. God says to keep trying. God is walking at our pace, at three miles an hour.” He said that while we do have an enormous capacity for evil, our capacity for good is infinite — and mentioned some of his own extraordinary work with the Truth and Reconciliation commission. The stories of atrocities brought before this commission made people want to explode — and then someone would speak words of compassion, generosity, and forgiveness. This reminded him that “we are all carriers of God.”

We all carry the divine within us.

These two holy men reminded me of that with their laughter. They have both witnessed horrible atrocities. One was expelled from his country at a very young age. The other survived apartheid. At times they would just look at each other and laugh.

At one point, Archbishop Tutu interrupted the conference to tell us something about the Dalai Lama. “How can he maintain this bubbling joyousness fifty years into exile?” he asked. He then said that it’s not just joyousness — the Dalai Lama is actually quite mischievous as well.

“Sometimes I have to remind him — the cameras are on us! At least try to behave like a holy man!” Archbishop Tutu then giggled, and we all broke out in peals of laughter. Sitting up in the choir, I laughed so hard that tears came to my eyes.

I will be singing for His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu when they are in town in April. This fills me with so much joy. Not only do I get to sing for the Dalai Lama, but I also get to sing for one of my heroes, Archbishop Desmond Tutu. His book “No Future Without Forgiveness,” really touched me when I was in college. Archbishop Tutu was one of the architects of the Truth and Reconciliation Commissions (TRC) in South Africa. He thought that healing the crimes of apartheid would be difficult in the context of the criminal justice system, and sought to create a different model for reconciliation and healing. At TRC hearings, the accused stands before the relatives of his/her victims or the victims themselves, if they are still alive. The accused asks for forgiveness, in exchange for telling the full and complete truth about his/her acts. TRC hearings have been criticized for abandoning the retributive justice model — some think that the TRC hasn’t done enough, and that people who committed horrific crimes can walk away with an “I’m sorry.” But in some cases, true forgiveness happens. Healing occurs. And in the process of creating a South Africa that has come to terms with its past, this is important.

But I did not mean for this to be a post about why I admire Archbishop Desmond Tutu. This is a post about singing.

It is important for me to be in this choir. My voice is my instrument, and the joy that fills me when I sing is unparalleled. Singing makes me smile like nothing else. And I think it is a measure of my faith in myself, as well.

I didn’t know I could sing, really sing, until the summer before my freshman year of college. I worked as a Boy Scout camp counselor (that story will be in another post, I promise) for five summers. I knew I could carry a tune, but it wasn’t until after I led a song and one of the Scoutmasters asked “do you sing professionally? You have a lovely voice,” that I thought “huh. Maybe I should do something with this.” So I signed up for voice lessons, and auditioned and got into Whitman’s Chorale and Vocal Jazz Ensemble on my first try, and started figuring out where my voice would take me.

I associate singing with many unforgettable moments. During my first semester of Chorale, we learned that one of my favorite professors was dying of terminal cancer, and only had a few weeks more to live. So one day, we walked over to his house — how 100 people could be that quiet and sneaky, I’ll never know — and started singing in front of it. My professor threw open the door, beaming. With great labor, he pulled a chair in front of the door, and sat down to enjoy a surprise concert. I will never forget the smile on his face. Our voices brought him so much joy. Within a month, he was gone. The church where they had his memorial service was bursting with people. And as we sang his favorite hymns, I could hear members of the Chorale singing the harmony lines.

I tend to be a little shy about my voice. I love singing with others, but when I sing alone (including at auditions), I get nervous and feel like I am singing off-key, even when I am not. During the second semester of my junior year, I decided to sing a solo, “Autumn Leaves,” at our spring vocal jazz concert. I was so nervous that I created a little mantra for myself — “have confidence in the power of your own voice.” I said this in my head every time I had a scat solo, and also right before I sang “Autumn Leaves” all by myself. I got up on stage, somehow got through my piece, and walked off. We singers tend to be very critical of our own performances, and I didn’t listen when my friends told me I was good. It wasn’t until I got a CD of the performance and listened to it that I realized that I actually sounded all right. When I listened to the track, I thought “no way. That can’t be me. That woman’s voice is full and big, and she sounds great! Maybe my director recorded someone else’s voice and put it over mine on the track.” And then I realized how silly and irrational that sounded. No, that was my voice. That was my own voice. The realization that I actually have confidence in the power of my own voice — that was amazing for me. I can speak up for what I believe in, and I can sing out my joy. We in this world, we always need joy.

After college, I didn’t sing in a choir for three years. After a really bad day, I told myself “I need to sing today.” So I found an all-women’s choir, auditioned for it, and started to remember how joyful singing makes me feel. Sometimes large groups of women can be catty, but this group is not — this group is full of laughter, smiles, and warm hugs. And once again, singing sustained me. Being in that group reminded me of why I sing in the first place — it’s not only to share my joy, it’s to share my love with other singers around me.

Today, I am singing in a different group. I am singing jazz again. And the power in my voice never ceases to amaze and inspire me. I still get nervous, but I am not as nervous. I will be singing onstage at a real jazz club with my choir in just a few weeks. I’ve come a long way from the girl who didn’t know she could sing, and I’ve realized that I will never, ever stop singing. And in a few weeks, I will raise my voice in that community choir and sing an “Ode to Joy” for two men, two wonderful men, whose acts of grace and kindness in this world can only be rewarded by the gift of song. I have a feeling that it will bring me to tears.

Ever had a piece of music in your head for days? Or wanted to listen to a certain artist for no apparent reason? Neurologist Oliver Sacks says this may because you have a brainworm.

In “Musicophillia,” Sacks writes “these repetitions — often a short, well-defined phrase or theme of three or four bars — are apt to go on for hours or days, circling in the mind, before fading away. This endless repetition and the fact that the music in question may be irrelevant or trivial, not to one’s taste, or even hateful, suggest a coercive process, that the music has entered and subverted a part of the brain, forcing it to fire repetitively and autonomously (as may happen with a tic or a seizure).”

Those jingles that get stuck in your head? Brainworms. Obnoxious pop songs? Brainworms, too. Sacks posits that it’s the repetition of the song or themes in the song that store it in your memory, just waiting for something to trigger it and make it invade your brain.

I find that I associate certain tunes with certain people. So when I think about a specific person, sometimes a song pops into my head. Just now, I was thinking about someone I met over the weekend, and the beautiful opening guitar line of Buena Vista Social Club’s “Y Tu Que Has Hecho?” popped into my head, unbidden. It wasn’t so much that I was hearing the melody — it was that I was experiencing it fully, and I had to sing the opening bars out loud.

This made me wonder — why am I associating this song with this person? “Y Tu Que Has Hecho?” is one of my favorite songs — I love the rhythms, the harmonies, the gentle guitar. Every time I listen to my Buena Vista Social Club CD with friends, when this song comes on, I remark “this is my favorite song on the disc.” But why am I associating this song with this person? And why won’t it leave my head? I tried listening to the song — we’ll see if that helps. Brainworms can make it difficult to get my graduate work done.

At least I’ve moved on from the Led Zeppelin obsession of the last two weeks. The ceaseless repetition of the bass line to “Heartbreaker” was starting to get obnoxious.

I am eight months into my experiment of living passionately, and so far things are going well. I’m still having a hard time defining exactly what “living passionately” means, but I have discovered that it involves a lot of faith — in myself, in a higher power, and in my ability to follow my dreams, even when those dreams change.

I realized recently that while my intellectual side and adventurous side were getting fulfillment through living passionately, I had been neglecting my spiritual side. Over Winter Break, I attended a funeral for a fellow student in my grad program. My mom stopped taking us to Catholic services around the time I was seven or eight, and ever since then, I’ve been a “weddings and funerals” churchgoer. But there was something about this church, and this service, that really grabbed me. The tribute to the student was heartfelt, organic, and mixed Christianity with intellectualism. The minister’s care was evident in every word he spoke. Partly out of curiosity, I decided to go back.

What I found was a church that welcomed believers, seekers and doubters. I found a comfortable, safe place in which I could explore the big questions of faith and spirituality. I found a community active in social justice, vibrant and joyful in witnessing their faith in the world. I found people who weren’t afraid to doubt among believers, who welcomed them regardless.

I’ve had coffee a couple of times with Peter, one of the ministers. The first time we had coffee, he asked me what I wanted to get out of going to church. I responded that I wanted to figure out why this church feels like home. I’ve never felt welcomed in a place of worship like that. I’ve never felt at ease, or at home. And now I’m kinda starting to think of myself as a Christian.

But I feel like, every time I say that, I have to add adjectives to it. I tell people “I go to a liberal progressive Christian church.” I’ve had conversations with the minister about how much it bothers me that so many people associate Christian with conservative — and that’s it. What about social justice? Liberation theology? The support to stand up for your ideals?

Peter and I have talked about my choice to live passionately. He said that it seems like I have been “called” to study and teach about the Balkans. He gave a sermon a few weeks ago that really spoke to me — about how when we are “called,” it never comes at a convenient time. It comes when we’re least expecting it — when we’re busy with other plans. For me, it came when I thought I was secure in my path — I knew where I was going, and I knew how to get there. And then I saw myself in five years — married to someone with whom I had little in common, laboring in a job I did not love, and absolutely miserable. Sometimes I wonder if that’s what was going on last summer, when I made my choice to live passionately. Maybe it was my “calling” speaking to me in a little voice — “Anna, it’s okay to step off on an unknown path. You need to shift directions to get where you need to be. And I’m going to nag you until you do.”

And now? The insecurity is frightening. I know where I want to be in five years, but I don’t entirely know how to get there. The path is full with applications and uncertainty. Yet the discovery is exciting. The light at the end of the tunnel motivates me. I laugh and smile a lot more now, and I worry a lot less.

I have faith that I am doing the right thing by living passionately. I am okay with being a seeker on this road.

So, my brother’s girlfriend has been studying abroad in Cameroon this semester. She and the other students on her program are being evacuated tomorrow. She’s posted an account of her experiences and proximity to the violence in Cameroon. What started as a transportation strike turned into widespread rioting and violence, as people express their disapproval of the president’s refusal to leave office.

Her blog is here. Have a read, and please keep the students in your thoughts.

http://kenyonisnotnearcameroon.blogspot.com/

Sorry I haven’t been writing much. I finished a draft of my master’s thesis this week. This is exciting — my first step towards an advanced degree!

I’ve turned my Facebook page into a bulletin board for articles about Kosovo and Serbia. Here’s a summary of the situation and some links. This week in the Balkans, Kosovo declared itself independent from Serbia. Many diplomats saw the move as a practical one, despite the anger the move provoked in Serbia. However, there are divisions in the international community. States with large, concentrated minority populations are less inclined to support Kosovo’s independence. Also, the declaration seems to violate UN Security Council resolution 1244, which (as I understand it), proclaimed Kosovo to be part of Serbia.
Russia is very much against granting Kosovo independence, as Russia itself has regions with large concentrated minority populations and fears separatist movements.

Now, before I go any further, I should say that there are strong arguments for and against Kosovo’s independence. I find merits on both sides. It is a sticky situation without a solution that will make all parties happy. On the one hand, Kosovo Albanians were subjected to mistreatment, ethnic cleansing, and mass murder at the hands of Slobodan Milosevic. I completely understand why they want to live in their own state. On the other hand, many Serbian monasteries and cultural sites are in Kosovo, and Serbs consider Kosovo to be their heartland. The new nation itself is tiny, and many have concerns over its economy and ability to support itself.

Back to my summary. Towards the end of a 250,000-strong, peaceful, government-sponsored protest on Thursday, a mob attacked the US Embassy in Belgrade. I’ve been in that building, so this definitely hit home for me. Diplomatic posturing and accusations began to fly. US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice blamed the Serbian government for failing to protect the embassy (and was a little bit flippant about the Battle of Kosovo and 1389, in my opinion), while Serbian Prime Minister Kostunica blamed the US for creating the situation. Meanwhile, the US temporarily evacuated its embassy staff and issued a travel alert for Serbia. The Serbian government is actively arresting rioters and condemning their actions. The rioters themselves were described by the New York Times as being those who were “left behind during the transition” away from the Milosevic government. While sadness and outrage are widespread in Serbia over the loss of Kosovo, most Balkan analysts believe that this will not start another war in the region. And from my own experience in Serbia last summer, I agree with the analysts. However, in Kosovska Mitrovica, a divided town in Northern Kosovo, Serbian mobs have attacked UN police.

To finish up my summary, the New York Times ran a piece about Serbian and Albanian Americans in New York. I found this article particularly interesting.

I will be watching the international news from Serbia quite closely this week. If you want to follow along yourselves, rather than wait for my sporadic updates, the BBC, Christian Science Monitor, New York Times, and B92 (Serbian independent news source) all have extensive coverage of the situation.

So, I went to a lecture about the breakup of Yugoslavia on Monday night. The lecture was given by a professor at the University of Washington who had worked with NATO in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The title of the lecture led me to believe that the professor would focus on the Dayton accords in Bosnia and current conditions of the region.

This professor started by attempting to discuss the history of the Balkans. And his primary source? Wikipedia. Now, when I teach undergraduates, I tell students never to use Wikipedia in their papers. Why is this? Well, Wikipedia articles are written by many people, and the accuracy of some of these articles is disputed. Wikipedia is great for giving overviews and summaries of things — such as Marx and Engels’ The Communist Manifesto, but information on Wikipedia should not be taken as factual. One can use Wikipedia to lead you towards scholarly, acceptable sources (scroll down to the bottom of each article for these), but one should never, ever pass off the information in Wikipedia as factual.

The professors’ maps of the Balkans were distorted, making Serbia look like it had more territory than it actually did in the interwar period. And then he started making statements like this one “Slobodan Milošević is still incredibly popular in Serbia today.” My friend Hillary, who has lived in Croatia and traveled extensively through the Balkans, looked at each other, surprised. Both of us knew, from our experiences living in Serbia and interacting with Serbs in urban and rural areas, that this is untrue. Nationalist sentiments that Milošević embodied are still popular in some parts (notably rural) Serbia. For example, B92 reports today that Tomislav Nikolić, the Serbian Radical Party’s candidate for president of Serbia, is leading after the first round of elections. Turnout in Central Serbia, described as the SRS’ stronghold, was high. But when I was in Serbia, I did not get the impression that Milošević himself is still popular. In fact, Eric Gordy (2005), in his book chapter “Postwar Guilt and Responsibility in Serbia” (in Ramet and Pavlaković, 2005, Serbia Since 1989), notes “the very low level of sympathy for him (Milošević) is remarkable.” Gordy’s article includes public opinion polling data taken in Serbia, and the picture that emerges of the man’s support is much more ambivalent than what the University of Washington professor would lead us to believe. According to Gordy, Milošević’s trial at The Hague was seen by some as a trial against Serbia. Most Serbs believed that he had committed all the crimes against humanity he had been accused of, and that he was also guilty of political killings and embezzlement in Serbia. Some Serbs wanted to see Milošević on trial for crimes he committed against Serbs during the period of his regime, not just the crimes he committed in Bosnia, Croatia, and Kosovo. On the charge of genocide, things get a little tricky. According to Gordy’s article, if Milošević had been convicted of genocide, future Serbian governments would have been seen as responsible, as “the responsibility of a state survives the regime which committed the criminal acts.” The current Serbian government — and by extension, citizens of that government — would have to pay for the crimes of the former Serbian government. Gordy basically ends up concluding that, while Milošević did not have public support in Serbia after his arrest and during his trial, people in Serbia were more ambivalent about the trial itself.

Later on in the lecture, the professor brought up the example of Belgium as a country where all ethnic groups get along and government runs smoothly. He obviously hasn’t been paying attention to the news lately. Belgium has an interim government — the state has not been able to form a government since the elections over six months ago. Political parties are now resuming talks to form a government. There has been discussion in the news over whether or not Belgium will break into a Flemish state and a French state.

After the lecture, I raised my hand and asked him where he got his information on Milošević. I explained that I’d lived in Serbia the previous summer, and had done quite a bit of reading on this — and came to the opposite conclusion about Milošević’s popularity. The professor backed down, saying “well, he’s not popular in all of Serbia, but he is popular in rural areas.”

When the Q&A session was over, two Serbian women walked up to me and thanked me for asking that question. One of them said “if I were to ask that question and challenge Milošević’s popularity in Serbia, I would just be seen as being defensive. You are not seen as being defensive.” The three of us got together at our Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian language club on Friday, and had a conversation about evidence, politics, and why one must be very careful in talking about the Balkans.

In discussing issues where feelings run high, one must be a responsible scholar and back up one’s statements. The professor could have done this by referring to articles, newspapers, and even his own experience working with NATO in the region. When he did talk about his NATO experiences, I found the information well-informed and consistent with research I have done. But when he didn’t back up his statements, he presented a biased and ill-informed version of recent history. Everyone has his or her own bias, and I believe that I am a better scholar for acknowledging my biases and working with them, rather than ignoring them. I was upfront in saying “I lived in Serbia,” acknowledging that yes, my opinions have been formed by this experience. And had he asked me what my evidence was for my own statements about Milošević’s lack of popularity, I would have told him. But this professor did not.

Hi there, blogosphere.

I found out on Friday that I will be taking a group of high school students to Morocco this summer on a service learning trip! I am very excited about this, as I will get to combine two of my greatest passions — teaching and travel. I plan on posting my Moroccan observations here.

Hope this Veteran’s Day finds all of you well.

So I really need to follow my Balkan news more closely. Within the past week, the prime minister of Bosnia stepped down, protesting internationally-backed measures to improve the way state institutions operate. From what I understand, Spiric’s protests are based on the proposed measures’ changes to the Dayton peace accords. ISN has a great article about the current situation. It’s interesting to me that demonstrators in Banja Luka are carrying pictures of Vladimir Putin. For more background on the Dayton peace accords and how they affected the political design of Bosnia, go to this post about Bosnia’s elections process.

Meanwhile, Western news outlets are reviving the specter of Serbian nationalism once again. According to Reuters, Serbia would back an independence bid by Bosnian Serbs should Kosovo gain independence. But, is this nationalism, or do Serb politicians just want the international community to respect their nation’s sovereignty? I find it awfully irresponsible of Western news outlets to characterize the crisis in Bosnia in this manner. As I wrote here, the issue of Kosovo’s independence is much more complicated than the way the Western news media describes it. However, a recent public opinion poll in Serbia showed that, while 35 percent of Serbs believe Kosovo will become independent, only 7 percent support independence for the province.

That’s all for this week. I’ll try to be a little more regular with my posts on these issues. This is definitely a region to keep a close eye on, especially in light of the ongoing talks on Kosovo’s independence.

I’ve been pondering this article for a couple of days now, ever since picking up an old edition of The New Yorker to read in the gym. In this article, Oliver Sacks describes Clive Wearing, a musician struck by amnesia. Wearing’s amnesia is so devastating that it reduced his short-term memory to mere seconds, and caused him to think that he was in the 1960s. Yet he could still sight-read piano concertos, and conducted his old choir just as he used to before his brain infection. The part of his brain where all of this information was stored was intact. When asked how he knew these things, Wearing couldn’t respond.

Sacks’ description of the love that Wearing and his wife Deborah still share nearly brought me to tears. Wearing forgets her name, but he knows that he loves her and that she is important. When she comes to visit him, he throws his arms around her and says “I haven’t seen you for ages,” even though she had visited the day before. As described by Sacks, in the course of his visit with the couple, Wearing “greeted her several times as if she had just arrived. It must be an extraordinary situation, I thought, both maddening and flattering, to be seen always as new, as a gift, a blessing.”

Wearing’s amnesia destroyed the memories he had of meeting and falling in love with his wife. He does not know who John F. Kennedy is, yet he can recognize his own children. Sacks describes how Wearing “always recognized Deborah as his wife, when she visited, and felt moored by her presence, lost without her. He would rush to the door when he heard her voice, and embrace her with passionate, desperate fervor. Having no idea how long she had been away—since anything not in his immediate field of perception and attention would be lost, forgotten, within seconds—he seemed to feel that she, too, had been lost in the abyss of time, and so her “return” from the abyss seemed nothing short of miraculous.”

According to Sacks, emotional memory is one of the least understood types of memory. He posits that Clive and Deborah’s relationship, still relatively new at the time of his encephalitis, was so strong that it engraved itself in his brain, “so deeply that his amnesia, the most severe amnesia ever recorded, cannot eradicate it.” Clive cannot describe Deborah unless he is looking at her, yet he knows that he loves her.

I find this sad, and yet oddly comforting — that the people, places, and things we love can go to a part of our brains that amnesia cannot reach. The stories of who we love and how we love are written in our minds. And even if we cannot recall of the details, we can recall the feelings.

Maybe I find this comforting because of my own experience, watching someone I love deeply lose her memories and her personality. My grandmother Ione died of Alzheimers-related complications in May. I called her Onee, because I couldn’t say Ione when I was little. I don’t think I have the words to describe how close we were, and how devastating it was for me to watch Alzheimers change her personality. The loving grandmother I knew who always had a kind word for everyone and thought that every accomplishment, no matter how small, deserved a celebration, became replaced by an alien woman who was often irrational, uncooperative and neurotic. My grandmother never yelled at anybody. This woman in my grandmother’s body made the staff at her nursing home cry.

But when my family visited her — especially when my brother and I did so — she was Onee again. Her face would light up as she’d beckon us to “give me some o’ that sugah, doll” in her Mississippi drawl. (This was Onee-speak for “I want a kiss on the cheek.”) She’d ask us about school, about our respective “freyends” (Mississippi for boyfriend or girlfriend. My grandmother always made a distinction between “friends” and “freyends,” which always made my brother and I smile.), and tell us to come back soon.

She’d forget the details in the space of the conversation and ask us the same things again, but she never forgot our names. She knew the names of all of the people she loved, and would frequently talk about them — even if we didn’t know who they all were. Our stories were written in my grandmother’s brain, in a place the alien Alzheimer’s woman couldn’t touch.

I like this idea — that the brain is an organ full of stories. There are some injuries, I know, that affect the whole brain. My grandmother’s Alzheimer’s would have progressed to the point that the alien would have taken over completely, and she would have forgotten my name. But I believe that the brain loves in an unusual way. There are some stories and some people whom we love so fiercely and so strongly that these are the last memories we lose. And even when struck by an affliction such as Clive Wearing’s amnesia, we know the faces of those we love, and we know that we love them, even if we cannot remember why we do.