I have been thinking a lot about history lately, which fills my head with unattributed quotes like: “History is written by the victors” and “Those who forget their history are destined to repeat it.” History, also, always feels distant, as though it has only ever been something that happened long ago, or far away, even though I have lived during quite a few historic events. Oh, that sentence right there, has a little bit of disassociation to it, didn’t it? I have lived “during” historic events but not “through” them. Do you ever do that too?
Yet, the thought that keeps popping up in my mind lately is the realization that history isn’t as distant, nor as impersonal as I often make it in my mind. History isn’t just old wars, fallen empires and dynasties. It isn’t just old buildings, famous artworks, notable people, or significant dates. Those are just the specifics that we choose to record, but mixed in and surrounding the events, achievements, and tragedies that we focus on are a multitude of people who had their own experiences tied to those events. Have you ever thought through your experience of history? When I do, there is a mixture of incidents that changed how I got to live life, how I viewed the world, and some that, while they would have an immense impact on others, created little more than an anecdotal story for me.
The impactful events were the ones where even though I wasn’t there, I remember where I was. Like the Columbine High School shooting and September 11th.
I was only 11 when the Columbine shooting happened and it was the first time I can remember something on the news scarring my little heart. The image that always comes to mind is that of a teenage boy climbing out a second story window trying to escape the shooters. I remember our mom taking us a few weeks later to the school, seeing the windows that were broken, then boarded up, and climbing a hill to visit a memorial for the students and teachers that lost their lives, walking by each little cross. It seem strange when its impact shows up in my adult life. Sometimes it’s just a brief sadness when I see a Columbine flower, once it was seeing a new high school being built and thinking “Why are the windows so small? You couldn’t escape through those if you needed to.”
September 11th, 2001 changed the lives of most Americans and I can’t even imagine the effect it had on the friends and families of the nearly 3000 people who died that day. It was the morning that my mom woke me up and said, “Amy, you need to get up and come watch the news. History is happening.” It marked the end of “field trips” to the airport to ride the “subway” at DIA, and brought into question the safety of our daily routine. I remember being wary to go to my church youth group the next day, for fear of attack (I ended up going and remember us all sitting in a circle on the gymnasium floor talking about what we were feeling and trying to processing all the things).
One historic event that feels almost like a footnote to me but was transformative to others has to be the Egyptian Uprising in 2011. It’s still a little surreal to think about. There I was, my first time ever traveling internationally, and there’s a revolt. At only 23-years-old, I was pretty oblivious to any unrest for the first part of our trip. I was enthralled in experiencing a different culture, learning about ancient Egypt, and walking through museums, temples, and tombs. My first clue that something was up, was when were on a little cruise ship traveling down the Nile. They had a TV sitting in the corner of the foyer on the ship, it always had the news on, but one day I noticed that instead of people just walking past, glancing at the TV, the staff was huddled around it. A few hours later they made an announcement that there were protests happening in Cairo and that they were giving us all a free phone call home to let our families know that we were safe. For me it is a unique story, for our tour guide, it was the catalyst for her career change.
The last few years have felt pretty historic too. With all the talk about unprecedented times and now a world war, thinking about the personal side of history helps me keep things in perspective. Because sometimes the history of today feels overwhelming, and the history of the past feels like it was handled by people who are larger than life. When in reality, just like I have my personal experience for historic events now, there are millions of untold stories from average people like you and me, who lived through the massive historic events of the past. Stories of people who pressed on through pandemics, world wars, and economic and political collapse.
They made it through… and so can we.
Sojourn Nation 