A Tale of Two Histories

May 7

It was the best of histories and the worst of histories.

Two deeply related but fundamentally different sets of information.

The first of the histories is the one that comes to mind: the entire sum of humanity before us, woefully incomplete in our capturing of it, what now exists for us as fragments of past thought, event, authors, and stories. The kind of thing we now relegate to afternoon-nap-worthy classrooms and books that could just as easily be used as doorstops.

The second history is not as immediately obvious—but it’s the history we are a part of. The one we are almost too painfully aware of, because we lack the dire perspective of the first history—remember only part of what is essential, and little of what is not. If the first history is a book then the second is a tidal wave, crashing and crashing into our lives, never letting us gain enough of a footing to feel certain for even a moment.

Of course, in time, the second history will pass as we do, becoming a part of the first, something unknown that a future generation must take the time to remember.

What history will we write for all but a few to ignore?

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