We Do Not Know Them All, But We Owe Them All

#memorialday #courage #resepect #patriotism

Memorial Day honors the men and women who have died while serving in the United States military. It was established in 1868 as a way for our nation to recognize the more than 600,000 soldiers who fell during the Civil War, by placing flowers on their graves on May 30—then called Decoration Day—when spring perennials were in full bloom. Later, during the first World War, the United States participated in its first major conflict on foreign soil, and lost more than 116,000 brave soldiers in the process. With the passing of the Uniform Monday Holiday Act passed some several decades later, Memorial Day became an official federal holiday intended to pay tribute to those who have fallen in the line of duty in our history of unfortunate conflicts.

Memorial Day is meant to be the most somber day on the American calendar. We are called upon to pause and remember the men and women who made the ultimate sacrifice in service to our country, in wars both at home and abroad. On this day, the American flag is ceremoniously raised to full-staff, then slowly lowered to half-staff, before finally being briskly raised to full-staff again, in tribute to our fallen soldiers. It is a day of contemporaneous reverence and mourning.

To celebrate Memorial Day merely because it means a day off from work is to miss the point of its existence altogether. We must recognize the significance of such a commemorative holiday for its true meaning, lest we forget the sacrifices that have been made, the lives that have been lost, and indeed, the hard-learned lessons of our sometimes tumultuous past. In the words of the American philosopher John Dewey, "We do not learn from experience...we learn from reflecting on experience." Let us, then, reflect upon the meaning of this day with proper deference, that the sacrifices of so many courageous men and women not be rendered in vain.