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We can’t unsee what we’ve become

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ColumnistWe can’t unsee what we’ve becomeStephanie Hayes | How will we be remembered? That’s hard to say.Sometime last year, I made a dermatologist appointment. Sometime last week, I realized that appointment was on Election Day. Perfect. A relaxing thing to do the morning of the most stressful day of the year is to be prodded under fluorescent lights. Maybe it was a tortured metaphor about self-appraisal.It turns out, Nov. 3 was the kind of day that makes you exhilarated to live in Florida. Sunny, breezy, 70, the sliver of season between sweat and sweet. That appointment extracted me from a news hellhole, to take a walk through downtown Dunedin, to sit still.Staff from Casa Tina were dismantling their Day of the Dead offering, an altar for souls set up in the park. They peeled off the photos, took back the apples and oranges, dried roses, empty bottles of tequila and papel picado. All those faces, mothers and fathers and siblings and friends. Estalita, and Grandma Barbara, plus a collection of tiny tin hearts for those lost to the virus that continues to ravage us. Nora and Kim and Mack and Sam and…The ofrenda can unleash emotions, acknowledge a loss, celebrate goodness, imperfections, joy, the quest for decency that separates humans as a species. It’s the purest hope of every memorial, isn’t it? That when you die, someone grabs your picture from a photo album, lights a candle and decides that more often than not, you did the right thing.I worry about us. I worry how far removed we are from what matters, willfully oblivious, lustful for garish celebrity, unwilling to defend those who need it, amenable to cheating. Will we be remembered less for our virtues and more for the trenches we dug in our crusades, digging, digging, digging until eventually we are out of sight?Some of us commodify nostalgia, hungry for America to be like it was… sometime. There’s an urge to say we will be okay, no matter what, that the sun still rises, that we have gotten through worse, that love is all that matters. Some people are not fine. Some have not gotten through, despite plenty of love. So many are needlessly dead, souls drifting in the ether of our indifference.There’s a picture. Maybe you’ve seen it. If you look at it one way, it’s a duck. If you squint, it’s a rabbit, and the duck’s bill is actually ears. Once you see it, you can’t unsee it. It’s a psychological phenomenon that will plague your senses for the rest of time.We can’t unsee what we’ve become.How hungry we are to win, screaming so hard we can’t hear anyone’s cries for help. So eager to topple an argument that our eyes freeze open and our necks go stiff like a contorted ghoul.How fearful we are of hard truths.How duplicitous we are, that we would help someone change a tire, pay for coffee, lift a stranger who fell down bloody in the street, then go home and transform into a wolf by the sinister glow of anonymity.How we believe tall tales. How we despise our families. How we paint each other in such broad strokes. How we reject safety and sacrifice so we never miss a party. How we spread the roadway with glass until the only logical result is to blow out.Subscribe to our free Stephinitely newsletterColumnist Stephanie Hayes will share thoughts, feelings and funny business with you every Monday.Loading...Want more of our free, weekly newsletters&nbsp;in&nbsp;your&nbsp;inbox? Let’s&nbsp;get&nbsp;started.How will we be remembered? What will they say when they tape up our photo and drape it with flowers? Will they say we learned and grew as a matter of practice, that we cared more for others than our own bottom line? Will they say we welcomed strangers to the table and let them speak first, or will they say we stood on the other side of the street, sneering like a schoolyard bully? Will they say we kept our good humor, we kept our faith, we kept our principles and we kept going in pursuit of those things?At this moment, it’s impossible to say. Hope is a friend. Time is a friend. Friendship is a friend. But we have to want to find out, and we will never do that clutching our splintered shovels from the bottom of a ditch.For weekly bonus content and a look inside columns by Stephanie Hayes, sign up for the Stephinitely newsletter. Get it free at .This site no longer supports your current browser. Please use a modern and up-to-date browser version for the best experience. — — —

ColumnistWe can’t unsee what we’ve becomeStephanie Hayes | How will we be remembered? That’s hard to say.Sometime last year, I made a dermatologist appointment. Sometime last week, I realized that appointment was on Election Day. Perfect. A relaxing thing to do the morning of the most stressful day of the year is to be prodded under fluorescent lights. Maybe it was a tortured metaphor about self-appraisal.It turns out, Nov. 3 was the kind of day that makes you exhilarated to live in Florida. Sunny, breezy, 70, the sliver of season between sweat and sweet. That appointment extracted me from...

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Stephanie Hayes

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We can’t unsee what we’ve become

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