Lest we forget. Rudyard Kipling wrote these words in 1897. Today, 126 years later, I feel like we’ve forgotten.

I do not remember the First World War, when “lest we forget” first began to be associated with what was then known as Armistice Day. I do not remember the Second World War, when my grandfather left his family in Canada and fought in Italy and Holland. I don’t remember Vietnam or Korea.

My memories of war are the Persian Gulf, Bosnia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Sudan, Congo, Ukraine, Israel, Palestine. Conflicts that I’ve seen on TV, the news, movies, and social media, while I am safe here in Canada.

My experience of war is distant. But the lessons of “lest we forget” are close.

I saw my grandfather stand at Remembrance Day services every Nov. 11 with medals pinned to his chest. I wore a poppy, read In Flanders Fields, learned about the Holocaust and listened to The Last Post.

The lesson was always never again. These terrible things must never happen again. We must learn, so that we remember, so that we do not repeat.

I learned the lessons of lest we forget, and then I have watched conflict after conflict, genocide after genocide happen again and again. We have forgotten.

In some ways, it’s easy to forget. I feel safe. Israel, Palestine, the Ukraine, Sudan are all far away. My family doesn’t live there. What happens there doesn’t affect me. Why should I care?

I recently heard Malcolm Gladwell paraphrase author James Keenan to say, “Sin is the failure to bother to care.” If we stand by and do nothing when we could help, we are in the wrong.

The lesson of lest we forget is that I am part of the world, and it is my responsibility—everyone’s responsibility—to care for and protect each other.

Remembrance isn’t just about the past. It is about the present and the future. How we behave now, tomorrow and the day after that.

Lest we forget.