Symbols

What role do symbols play in my life? It seems simple enough--they're everywhere: Red light--stop; an object surrounded by a red circle with a line diagonally through it--don't do it; cross--Christianity; and so on. But there is one symbol that held much meaning for me when I was an undergraduate in college, and to be honest, it still evokes a strong enough memory today that I feel emotion or at least the pull of a memory when I see it. That's a peace symbol.

It represents a complex layering of meaning for me. I recall a more innocent, free spirited time in my life culminating in a year in which my generation lost its innocence. The school year was fall 1969 and spring 1970. I was a very naive first year college student--the first of my family to go off to college, like so many of my classmates were. The newly found freedom and idealism of that year was shattered in the spring with the Kent State deaths in Ohio at the hands of their national guard. The Vietnam War had already claimed the lives of so many young American soldiers, but in that one moment, it also took the innocence of thousands of college students all across the country. That is what this symbol represents to me--a desire for an unobtainable peace.