Putting History In Its Place
I have had a long and convoluted relationship with history. For example, I used to suffer from the delusion that ‘history’ and ‘the past’ were two totally separate things. In the 8th grade, I used to mime shooting myself in the head on my way to history class; I could see absolutely no value to studying people & events that had been over & done with hundreds of years ago and maintained that it was, without a doubt, ~the~ most practically useless course I was taking. At the same time, I held an absolutely insatiable fascination with the past; I couldn’t get enough of what my relatives, especially my parents, had been like when they were younger, what relationships had been like & the metamorphoses they’d gone through in the years since then.
History is just a bunch of dessicated laundry lists no one cares about anymore. The past helps you understand how things got to be the way they are now.
It definitely took me something on the order of seven or eight years to realize that the only difference was one of scale. My initial conception of things does, however, beg the question about history’s proper place with regard to how we understand the world.
The weird thing about ‘history’ and ‘the past’ is that, with the exception of things that can be proven to have happened or not happened (which, when you think about it, is an astonishingly small number of things), it only really exists in our minds. Ie, there are plenty of things that I know perfectly well to have happened that no one would ever be able to contradict me about, were I to declare that they hadn’t. I think about this sometimes with regard to my nephew. I can still remember my mother’s reaction when she found out my 18 year old sister was pregnant, and how she couldn’t see any way that things would ever be okay again. I know she gained some consolation from a good friend whose own daughter had gotten pregnant at a young age; looking back at a similar situation some five or six years after the fact, her viewpoint was that my mother’s love for & enjoyment of her grandchild would eventually dwarf the part of history that comprised the circumstances of his conception.
Fast forward to six and a half years later. My nephew just started kindergarten, my sister is an amazing mother, both are doing great, and our whole family can’t imagine what life would be like without him in the picture. Every now and then, though, my sister has to deal with what I can only describe as discrimination based on the circumstances of my nephew’s origins. Whether it’s because she was so young when she had him, because she’s a single mom, or because she was never married to his father in the first place, there’s always someone who will make a judgment based on history, and not the present.
Does this mean we should disregard the past entirely? No. But it’s vitally important that we put it in perspective. Are there facts about what happened seven years ago that are occasionally still relevant in both their lives? Of course. Did she make some poor choices? Probably, and there are plenty of people out there who could learn from them; I know she certainly did. On the other hand, when she takes her child to the first day of kindergarten like any other mom, does where he came from really matter? Is her age or marital status important when she takes him to the pediatrician with questions for the doctor? Unequivocally, no. And yet, people will still insist on giving weight to history where it just doesn’t deserve it.
On the other hand, this can sometimes be a tricky issue. I get bogged down in history a lot — not necessarily dwelling on it when it isn’t relevant, but feeling unable, sometimes, to determine whether or not it is relevant. If X situation seems great now, does it matter that the same people/person & I were once involved in Y situation that made me feel really shitty? On the one hand, the answer could be no; it could be that the past is the past, and there’s nothing to be gained by flogging a long-dead horse. On the other hand, there is some inherent value to understanding the past because it helps us understand how we got to where we are, and could be a huge clue about the road we’re currently on and where it’s going.
Even worse is the past you know darn well is utterly useless, and still can’t let go of, like a sore in your mouth that you can’t quick poking with your tongue. Even when you can see where it’s going, and it’s nowhere good.
…
That’s all I have to say about that right now.