So: How often have you heard it remarked today that this is the 57th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy?
Not once, I’m guessing.
I mention this because it’s a pointer to how time rolls on. It wasn’t that long ago — 10-years? — that this date could not pass without at least a mention of it, perhaps a broadcast snippet of the infamous Zapruder film, a flash of the image of a scowling Oswald. For decades, there were books written in futile attempts to sort-out the botched investigation. But searching just now, I find less than a half-dozen allusions to the assassination on Twitter.
Those who were middle-aged at the time are now gone. Those who were young adults are … going, by the thousands, every single day. To we who were young schoolchildren it’s now just a dramatic childhood memory whose outlines are fuzzy.
The stoics had an expression: memento mori — remember that you will die. The Kennedy assassination is a good example of what they meant: Keep things in perspective, because time rolls on and the day is not far off when nobody, anywhere, will care about today’s events.