Vision for a Fresh View of History

Hide Me in the Shadow of Thy Wings, pencil by Tim Holmes

History is just one damn thing after another, or so it's presented to us. For one, it's a clear record of how incredibly stupid we can be! Like the man who fell down the stairs said as he got up and brushed himself off, “Well, I'm glad to get that over with!”, they've already happened so now let's at least make use of all those mistakes and learn something from them. As Carl Jung and others have been trying to tell us, things happen for a reason. There's a meaning to any historical event. It is our call to figure out what the lesson is and not waste it.

We don't have to see the future as an extension the way things have been working any more than a kid who fears college is going to be the same thing as high school, only worse! Everything can be seen in a new light. History had to happen the way it did because that's the only way we could have gotten here. Something like World War I may seem like nothing more than a monumental waste, but the human race would not have matured psychically as much as we have without that debacle.

It seems to take forever for us to recognize obsolete paradigms. Granted we didn't evolve to change with the times, but if we're to last much longer we'd best develop that capacity.