I recently read a quote saying something about always looking forward because looking backward is for time travelers. I get the point: Don’t dwell in the past. However, I think looking back is important, so count me among the would-be time travelers.
We learn so much about moving forward by what has happened in our past. “Once burned, twice shy” loses all meaning if we don’t recall the pain of the first burn.
In science and medicine, we make new discoveries by trying and failing and trying again. It usually takes many, many tries. But every try needs to be documented and revisited before the next try or we suffer the same failures.
We can hope to avoid future mistakes, but we can make educated decisions by studying what our predecessors did. From their choices, we can learn what to do—and what not to do.
Obviously, I strongly believe in learning history and learning from history.
Celebrating a History of Unity
The July 4th holiday is celebrated with fireworks, games, and barbecues, but it needs to be more than that. We need to remember what and why we are celebrating.
The only reason we are a country is because the US gained its independence from Great Britain in the Revolutionary War. After years of war, we had to fight again to keep it a country in the War of 1812. We will have more respect for our forefathers if we know what they went through to create this nation.
Did they make mistakes? Certainly. Everyone does. Is it a perfect nation? Of course not. Can we make it better? Absolutely. But we can’t do that if we forget all that came before.
Less than 50 years after the War of 1812, our country fought again. This time, it was a Civil War, where we fought against ourselves. If the Confederacy had won, we’d have split into two countries. I believe if we had split, we would have ended up fighting more civil wars afterward. Being one is good.
We Can Learn from History
People in our country have always had differences of opinion. Those differences led to that Revolutionary War which created our nation and led again to that Civil War where we had to decide which direction we wanted to go. Other wars have followed. What did we learn from them? The only way we can avoid future wars is by studying the past and taking lessons from it. Can we move forward peacefully? I hope so with all my heart.
More than 200 hundred years ago, author and orator Edmund Burke said, “Those who don’t know history are destined to repeat it.” Wise words, which are a part of—you guessed it—history.
Bringing History to Life
That phrase, bringing history to life, is why I write. It was the combination of story and character that hooked me on American history and I hope that my stories can do the same. I firmly believe that historical fiction is the best way to interest students in history. If readers get invested emotionally in characters and their stories, history becomes more than dry facts. If history is more than dry facts, we just might be able to learn from it.
