Why I Wonder About a Mailbox

My neighbor has installed a large, metal mailbox on the top of the fence in front of his house, which I noticed this morning as I took my morning walk.

What does this mean?  Is he getting too old to run outside when he hears the beep beep of the mailman’s motorbike outside? Should I check on him?  Has he had a quarrel with the mailman and decided to avoid contact with him by installing a mailbox for the first time in 67 years even though (if the truth be known) he gets only bills and ads, since one part of his family is up the road and sees him every day, and the other part is in Australia.  They never write, he has told me sadly, because as time goes on, the ties begin to fade and then are broken forever.  You need more than a mailbox to fix that.

And then I saw that another neighbor’s daughter has gotten a new pair of boots, a sort of beige suede, actually quite attractive, and that the right sole is about two inches taller than the left, which is because a disturbed student in her special needs school kicked her chair and she fell off, fractured her leg in several places, and, after a botched operation, was left with the right leg shorter than her left, requiring her to walk like as though she were drunk or insane or something even worse:  a victim of cruel Destiny.  Wasn’t it enough that a midwife had failed to free her neck in time from a twisted umbilical cord, thus leaving her with permanent brain damage? 

And then, later the same day, a story in the media about the high schoolers, 39% of whom had never heard of Ovcara.   For anyone else who has never heard of it, here’s a summary, according to one of hundreds of reports filed by international agencies (in case you haven’t noticed, unless the “international community” says it happened, it never did.):

On or about November 21 1991, Serb forces removed approximately 255 Croats and other non-Serbs from Vukovar Hospital in the aftermath of the Serb take-over of the city. The victims were transported to the Ovcara farm located about 5 kilometres south of Vukovar. There, members of the Serb forces beat and tortured the victims for hours. During the evening of November 21 1991, the soldiers transported the victims in groups of 10-20 to a remote execution site between the Ovcara farm and Grabovo, where they shot and killed them. Their bodies were buried in a mass grave.

- War Crimes Indictment against Milosevic and others

Every day we are confronted with events, from the mundane to the horrific, that require introspection, examination, or resolution, and, let’s face it, there’s too much of everything. The average citizen today receives more information from one daily newspaper than a Renaissance man might be exposed to during his entire lifetime, so it is not surprising that most people feel overwhelmed, impotent, and powerless at the excess of stimuli:  So why not surrender to total,-all-encompassing apathy?   After all, we're living in a post-modern world, fueled by narcissism.  If we can’t change anything, we can at least satisfy our own personal desires!  But man is a social animal who craves connection, community, and meaning, so the more he retreats, the more depressed and isolated he becomes.   

I guess that’s why I was curious about the mailbox and empathetic about the neighbor girl’s need for orthopedic shoes:  the human need to connect to my friends, acquaintances, neighborhood and community; everybody needs to belong to something larger than oneself. It’s also why I was dispirited by the fact that 39% of high schoolers had never heard of Ovcara.  Where was their curiosity, not about mailboxes, but about a major act of brutality and bloodshed from their country’s recent history, inflicted upon members of their families, community, nation?  Had they no connection to that suffering? 

On the importance of these connections, George Eliot has written:  “What greater thing is there for human souls than to feel that they are joined for life - to be with each other in silent unspeakable memories?”  After all, we all grow up with the weight of history on us.  “Our ancestors dwell in the attics of our brains as they do in the spiraling chains of knowledge hidden in every cell of our bodies.”  (Shirley Abbott)  If a link in that chain of knowledge is broken, we lose our connection and become anchorless ships drifting out to sea, with no past, and, as a result, no future..  It’s something for families and educators to keep in mind, and especially the high schoolers who have never heard of Ovcara.