Our present will become the past of other men and women. We

Eavan Boland’s words—"Our present will become the past of other men and women. We depend on them to remember it with the complexity with which it was suffered. As others, once, depended on us."—carry the weight of centuries within their breath. In them lies the eternal chain of memory: that what we endure today shall be the inheritance of tomorrow, and what was borne by those before us becomes the soil from which we rise. The present is not fleeting, but a seed; the past is not gone, but living in the hearts of those who will keep it alive.

To suffer is to live deeply, to endure both the glory and the wound of existence. Boland reminds us that the complexity of our struggles must not be reduced to simplicity or forgotten in haste. For every sorrow carries within it a lesson, and every joy is woven with shadows. To remember rightly is not to glorify nor to condemn, but to hold the truth in its fullness, to honor what was lived as it was lived.

History reveals the power of such remembrance. After the horrors of World War II, survivors of the Holocaust cried out: “Never forget.” They knew that their present anguish, if not faithfully remembered, could be reduced to dust and denial. They depended on the generations to come to remember the suffering in all its complexity—the cruelty, the courage, the despair, and the endurance. In this act of remembrance lies both justice and protection, ensuring that memory itself becomes a shield against repetition.

Boland’s words also whisper of reciprocity. Just as we look back and honor the sacrifices of those who came before—freedom fighters, poets, mothers, builders—we too will be judged by those who come after. Our present shall become their past, and they will shape it in the telling. Shall they recall it as shallow, or will they see its depth, its sorrows, its hopes? As others once depended on us to remember, so too must we live in a way worthy of being remembered.

Let future generations take heed: the work of memory is not passive, but sacred. To remember is to keep the souls of the past alive, and to fail in remembrance is to kill them a second time. Thus, Boland calls us to live our present with truth, to suffer with dignity, and to trust that those who follow will hold our days with the same reverence we hold theirs. For in this unbroken chain of memory lies the immortality of humankind.