“Those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”

I always thought that was a stupid saying. I also thought it would be a nice crack to make at the end of the semester if you were a history teacher and you were trying to freak out, and entertain, students who were failing. Anyway, as I grew up, I found that even though I rolled my eyes at it for years, it’s probably pretty true. The whole idea of learning from mistakes strikes a chord with me. (Yes, yes, we’ve all been through this before!)

But deeper than that, does not learning from history also doom someone to mediocrity? I think it might.

I myself have lately begun a love affair with History. And there’s just something about it that never fails to get me hot and heavy (which, if you want to know, I am anyway.). The thing is this: History is now.

For most of my life, history was just this thing happening in fourth period while I counted down the minutes till lunchtime and/or recess. It was like this nice boy that hangs out with all your girlfriends and you think he’s pretty alright and might have a crush on you but he’s just not substantive enough for your taste. My teachers strived to get the photocopied pictures in our books to really hit home, wiping their sweat stained brows in front of a room of dull eyed children who refused to care. And all I could think was, “So, let me get this straight: this thing happened, and then this thing happened? Wow, that’s really . . . not fascinating at all.”

But then you go off to college, and you come home over break and you’re hanging out with your high school chums and you run into History coming out of the library. He’s grown his hair out and is reading Russeau and Satre. He’s traded his specs in for a motorcycle, and suddenly you realize that history is actually kind of hot. He’s out of the classroom and into the streets.

This may all be a little too obscure. What I really mean to say is that in recent times, I’ve begun to appreciate history for its introspection. That is, learning about the development of the world reminds me that things haven’t always been the way that they are, and so, carried out, things won’t always be as they are now either. And that lends a great deal of efficacy and agency.

Great historical junctures of the nation, like the Civil War, the American Revolution, the Civil Rights Movement . . . Its great to think to myself that they were not guarantees. Imagining an upstart group of farmers forming a makeshift militia and taking on one of the most powerful military powers on the globe at the time is completely insane, and even more so, the idea that such a thing would be successful? Seems improbable to the extent of laughable. But these outgunned people had an idea and a conviction, and upheld it without knowing the outcome. SUPER hot.

And it’s inspirational, right? Knowing the uncertainties faced, the fear that all could have been lost and come to nothing, the fact that brave souls made brave choices anyway is wonderful. So when people say to me when I come up with some hair-brained social change, “That’s just the way it is,” I get to be all, “Oh really? You know who never said that? Martin Luther King Jr.!!!”

Everything moves and progresses. Everyone has the opportunity to make something of time. And one day people will look back on this time like so much barbarianism, horsedrawn carriages, and livestock in the streets. Everything changes. And we will change it.

It turns out that things are not quite as they seem, or at least they weren’t. Of course, I say that a lot, but apparently it’s a good lesson because it keeps coming up.

Case in point, I was recently reacquainted with a boy I knew from high school. Well, to be honest, I didn’t know him but rather of him. At any rate, during the course of this late night online conversation, I began to think that maybe he wasn’t quite the person that I’d believed.  In part, that was because we weren’t actually friends so all I knew of him was what I gleaned from I think a shared math class maybe and numerous hallway passes during which I was pretty oblivious, which was typical of me and probably still is. It was nothing drastic, no deep dark buried secrets or anything like that. But in feeling, it seemed as though there was a different air and flavor to who he had been than I was aware of, and that almost made it seem more important somehow than if he’d revealed that he’d been a teenage arson or had had a scandalous affair with a teacher. But through this, I realized that I was guilty of the usual high school sin of lumping everyone into only two groups, the first of which was made up of a couple of people who took pity enough to hang out with me but weren’t quite as dorky as I was; The second was everybody else.

(more…)

I’ve finally garnered enough support to have a first official re-founding meeting of Writers’ Grope in Real Life. Huzzah! Now I have only to write a dazzlingly spectacular literary dream of a story and I’m in the clear. Speaking of which, if anyone is interested in joining this ragtag band, what’re you doing next Monday at seven p.m.?

I should turn my TV off. I’m supposed to be writing.

But before I do, can I just say that I hate those Above The Influence commercials? They’re about as bad a those anti-smoking public dramas with wind up baby dolls and people trying to mail cigarettes. There’s so much information out there about why smoking whatever it is is a horrible plan with devastating consequences that if someone has already decided to do it, I don’t see how a commercial is going to make much difference. It isn’t as if someone shows up in an NA meeting and says, Yeah, I thought my life was great, but then I saw this PSA about a little boy wearing a million T-shirts and it made me ask myself, could THAT be ME?

Really? When you’re under the influence of drugs you act like a jerk? Didn’t your girlfriend just tell you that yesterday? Really? Blowing smoke in babies’ faces is bad for them? And you’re telling me that the tobacco industry KNEW this the whole time?! Wow. So did everyone.

I know I sound con- and pre-tentious. Maybe I’m just bitter these days. But these messages seem so obvious and therefore a waste of time. A way for people to feel like Something Is Being Done when really nothing is being done at all. I hate the model of, What should we do about this huge problem? We could either become responsible fellow people and talk with specific at risk individuals that we personally know and partner with them and assist them lovingly and thereby reach fewer people perhaps but deeply, or we could make a silly commercial and reach everyone without even scratching their surface. I think we have a winner!

Sigh.

I’m being complainxious. Sorry.