Dear Editor,
One asks, “Why is history important?” Let me ask you something. Why is it not?
Think of the longest timeline you can imagine. Then, picture taking a millimeter slice out of it. You know what that miniscule slice of time is? Your life, from the time you were born to the day you leave this world. The line ahead is unknown, unexplored time, but what’s before that we do know.
You are living history. Your very existence, as each second slips away, in becoming the past. Your history in inescapable. The questions, the big questions that are the base of all others, are answered through history. Each of us has a set of parents, and they each had their own parents before that, creating a genealogy that stretched back along the timeline to the beginning of history, to Adam, the first man.
History is our physical foundation.
Every part of our lives, our world, our society, and our morals are built on the experiences of others.
There is a history to everything around you.
When we study it, we realize that history repeats itself.
It’s human nature to make mistakes, but God gives us the ability to learn from them. He gave us a knowledge of the past so we can study the lives of other people who made mistakes and learn from their experiences.
We can’t even begin to understand the present until we are familiar with the past.
We cannot even understand ourselves, or who we are. Each of us is the equivalent of our past life.
Another reason to look into the events of history is to realize just how rich and amazing the many different cultures of this world are. We can see how modern ideas and views formulated, and watch the changes and advances that have been established over the centuries.
Our existence is only a fraction of a much bigger plan, a story, His story, which has been playing out for thousands of years.
Rebecca Hofstede
Westlock
