What comes to your mind when you hear word “history”? Most likely would have flashbacks of a classroom in school with portraits of famous people on the walls, or a recent documentary that was shown in black and white colors. The Merriam-Webster dictionary describes the word as “the study of past events”, but then gives 11 more definitions of slightly different meanings. Well, here I argue that history although fairly complex subject shouldn’t be the realm of only scientists or historians. Each person carries history, the past experience, the losses and victories, which ultimately continues every new day. And learning people’s stories is the same as learning history in the broader sense.
“Not to know what happened before one was born is always to be a child.”
Cicero, 106-43 BCE, to the Roman Senate
[His Story]
I like to entertain myself with following pun: “History is his story“. The way I see history is simply story of a person. Whether it’s invention of printing press by Gutenberg, the causes of Napoleonic Wars, or discovery of the New World by Columbus, all of these are stories of an ingenious gadget, military events or person’s life.
Why is it “his story” you ask me, not “her story”? Because for the most part of human history, the main narrator and protagonist was man (to be precise white man). Women until roughly century ago didn’t have voice, rights, or even a place in the history. It’s nice to see that nowadays more and more documentaries feature story of women. In this sense I see crippled history, only featuring one gender’s point of view.
How history makes us better
Have you ever met a person who was reminiscing about “good old days”? It’s common to hear that the new generation is not “real”, they don’t understand the life, or “back in my times in Soviet Union, the life was better and ice cream cost only 3 kopecks” (by the way read a super fun article about history of Soviet ice cream here).
The essence of the human memory is such that negative events that happened to us have more chances to be forgotten than positive ones. And frankly this is a good thing, can you imagine looking back at one’s life and remember only losses, failures, and defeats? In this sense I like to exemplify the survivors of the Holocaust, many of whom have had become prominent figures. Now, this is the examples of strength and power of learning from the past events. History gives us the opportunity to analyze what had happen, learn lessons, and strive for the better. This skill is hard to learn, but we all have to do it, otherwise life might resemble a hamster running in the wheel.
Thoughts to ponder
History in its conventional understanding is the academic field of study of the past. It can be convoluted, overwhelming or unknown. Sometimes two opposing point of views can have legitimate arguments to back them. But history doesn’t have to be boring, biased or unfair. Each of us is holder of our history, our story, learning from it, analyzing it, helps us to debunk our own behavior and with it understanding of the world History (yes, with capital letter).