Why I used to love history as a young girl

Okay, okay I still do. I admit I am not so excited about it as I once was because I am so busy all the time that I hardly have time to get to know things I once was very passionate about. As well as the fact that I do not know where to start truly. I do however love myself a documentary and watch them all the time. I also belief that back in the day it was a lot easier you would go to the library or watch a show on tv about your favourite era. Even school books used to be a ton of fun to read. I have however found that almost every subject especially those that have a bit of interpretation around them change. They get politicised, these subjects. Which I personally belief is wrong. I think history is important it’s a way that we remind ourselves of things that can never happen again. That is why we in (most western countries. I can not say the world as I am unsure) we stand still by those who have fallen. We think about what they did, how they blessed our life. We are proud that we are free, that we can stand where we want and be who we want to be. We think about those in other places that are not free, we agree that they should have the blessings that we have here.

I have always been taught that we should look at history trough the same lens that the people did all those year ago, we need to observe what happend and how these people felt. And then we zoom out, we look at it and we discuss. We discuss al the parts, the good, the bad and the ugly. It is important for our youth to know how such a small country like mine could become so big but also how it all crumbled. We need to learn why we vow to never have a war here again. Why it happend and why it can never happen again. And also how they felt so that we are aware when history is trying to strike once again. There will be a (near) future where no one is living to tell the tale. There won’t be people that survived so we need to teach our children. People forget, and when they forget they repeat. We can not and should not let that happen.

We also should be proud of who we are and where we come from. Each and every country has it’s unique history and we can travel to find out the history of others. We can talk about it and learn from each other. We can in this digital time, now more than ever show how it once was and how it is now. How the colosseum looked when it first opened, we can travel and see what is perceived. We can learn from each other. So we don’t have to repeat our own or someone else’s mistake. We need to know what we are all individually are standing for.

I used to have a fantastic history teacher in high school that would teach us the importance of critical thinking. About how history is written by survivors. How the ‘losers’ would feel, think. What they would say. But also how with hindsight we can never fully understand. So we would talk about communism and how it has failed in certain countries all over the world, what the idea was behind it. Where it came from and why it’s not something we should strive for. I am not talking about health care, I am blessed I live in one of the best health care systems in the world. Communism isn’t about things like health care. It’s working so hard but never having anything to show for it. Inner motivation is amazing but for a lot of people it’s not there. Yet still people think that communism is the way to go and that scares me a bit. People nowadays don’t know enough. And when we don’t know, we are not aware. When we are not aware we repeat. In class we also talked about the world wars and how people could vote for someone as terrible as Hitler and why you always see these videos of him screaming (or very passionately talking. I don’t speak German so it doesn’t have the intended impact on me) and that people would clap and be happy. And how being around exciting people makes you excited and how a good speaker can make you belief almost anything but above all how dangerous this is. I have always been interested in how people work. What drives them and how they could excuse things they did. It’s weird the way that people but it’s good to know. We should know so that we can protect ourselves.

I think we are fortunate enough to know a ton about our history. To have videos and pictures. I think we should teach each other how to properly look at history. To look at it in it’s context and to then have a good discussion about what we can learn from it. Because only then we will not repeat the mistakes the people before us made. Only then we will create the future and not a blueprint of our past.

Lots of love,

Melissa