Relics

Visiting your childhood bedroom can be a weird experience, especially as you get older. It's somehow like a museum to a person you used to be filled with mementos and artifacts of a time not so long gone.

In my case, my mom has perfectly preserved every major gymnastics trophy, show poster, favorite book series, award letter, etc. Now don't get me wrong, it's lovely to take a walk down memory lane, but recently I've been thinking about the history of attaching memories to objects.

There are so many beautiful churches and cathedrals that I have visited during my travels, and nearly all of them boast some sort of relic. Now the likelihood of any, let alone all, of these relics being real is incredibly small, yet they still draw in thousands of visitors a year.

In Chartres, France, I've seen a piece of cloth thought to have been worn by Mary when she gave birth to Jesus. Supposedly, the cathedral has burned down a few different times, and every time, the cloth has been mysteriously (or miraculously) spared.

The Duomo in Milan is said to house one of the nails which held Jesus to the cross. A museum in Vienna houses the spear which pierced Jesus' side. Notre Dame in Paris holds the crown of thorns. And on and on and on.

I had never put much thought into relics until I was at the beach with my family a few weeks ago when I thought I lost this pair of sunglasses. Now the sunglasses aren't expensive. They aren't pretty. I didn't even buy them.

But when I thought I had lost these sunglasses, I was really upset. Really upset. So I tried to figure out why.

It turns out that I don't care about the sunglasses, but I do care about the memories associated with how I got them. It's been a while since the person who gifted them to me has been in my life, but every time I look at those sunglasses, I am reminded of all the good times.

The sunglasses are like a tangible memory from a period of my life which doesn't exist anymore. They are, in a way, like all of the relics in those cathedrals.

Because religion plays a huge role in the lives of many, these relics, whether they are real or not, allow us to remember and relive the history associated with them.

But regardless of what I have discovered about relics, I have learned my lesson and will keep better track of my sunglasses and therefore all the memories attached to them.