History

What is the value of history - personal, national and global (world)?

At the root of it, history is a means to ascertain our existence. History is narrative. And the human race has always had an innate desire to tell stories, to write them, and to recount them. It is what keeps us alive; It is what tells us that we are present, here, in this time and space. We need others to hear and listen so they can reflect our existence.

But history, in its most personal form, is memory. We reminesce and remember to know that we exist(ed). We look back in time and objectify ourselves as a third person often wondering if that was who we were in a forgotten time and space - remembered only in the recesses of our minds. And so in some contorted fashion, existence is merely memory and perception. We create our own realities - nowhere else but in our minds.

We look back introspectively - and we laugh, smile, cry and weep; we are moved, inspired, ashamed, guilt-ridden. That is the power of memory - to shape future memories; to shape the present. In the same way, history in its 'larger' form has the same power. It could shape the world - its future and its present.

But the irony of our own lives, and the world, is that we never learn. We would rather indulge in realities that have passed. And we often only choose to see what we want to see.