About Yesterdays
Post 31:
So I’m big on the past. Take it easy. Some people don’t like anything. Those people suck. Anyway, pretty sure lovers of what’s already happened (like me) are narcissists. It’s a theory based on absolutely no evidence, but I think it plays. History nerds have a hard time thinking that anything ever took place before them. That’s the thing that’s so fascinating. What? Just being honest. The past is one of those mysterious unknown knowns—the whole story of time is kind of like an unending linear tree that fell in the forest.
I’m digging myself a deep one today.
Whatever. I’ll get somewhere.
I’ve always advocated more education history in schools, and when I say advocated, I’ve mentioned it to at least six people over the course of my life. It was my major in college, heck, I almost went on to do the doctorate thing. Can you imagine me in academia? Actually don’t. That’s too weird, even for my fragmented brain.
As a guy that writes stories you might think I read a lot more fiction, but I probably tend more toward nonfiction historical stuff. Really, they’re all just stories. Nothing has ever happened exactly the way you heard it told. Except the exceptions.
So why should you or anybody else jump on my nerdy bandwagon? Don’t know, but it can’t hurt. I think of it more as psychological profiling people that have already made their mistakes and had their successes. Maybe that’s voyeuristic, but we’ve already determined that I’m a narcissist. Pretty certain I have a few more ists.
You get a deeper understanding of the struggle of the human story, to get right down to brass. Putting yourself in the shoes of some besieged king or some imperiled peasant from the past can only make you more sympathetic. Or it can make you fall asleep. The good news is, they won’t mind. They’re already dead.
So give it a try. I recommend The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire by Gibbon. It’s one of the all-time greats. 98,000 pages of some of the most inane and useless information anyone has ever put down on paper.
Joking. That puppy put me in a coma. I was the first person admitted to the hospital for overdosing on ancient history.
Cheers knuckleheads. See you after.
