When I was 16 years old, I touched a man’s forearm where Nazis had tattooed him as their prisoner before locking him into a concentration camp from which he was never meant to escape.
As I touched the faded ink, he looked me straight in the eyes so I could see that he was human.
That touch brought history out of the textbook and into my life.
When I was 17 years old, my AP History teacher Leonard Fenelon taught me about historical nuance.
Long before Lin Manuel Miranda made him cool, Len Fen made our entire class pay respect to an Alexander Hamilton statue in between touring Ellis Island and watching Miss Saigon on Broadway.
He taught me that history propels our values and ideals.
When I was 20 years old, I was delivering a message outside the Senate cloakroom in the United States Capitol (sometime after the first World Trade Center tower was hit, but before the true scope of the attack was made clear) completely unaware that a group of passengers in the sky above Pennsylvania were likely saving my life.
That moment showed me that we live through history.
I’ve felt history’s pull in our common experiences ever since – especially this past year.
I felt it when the House of Representatives impeached the President of the United States and again when the Senate voted to acquit.
I felt history’s pull when a gay person won the Iowa Caucuses for the first time.
I felt it when the words “global pandemic” leapt from my library’s History shelf to Current Events, then only became available through curbside pickup.
I felt history’s pull when I saw opportunists filling shopping carts with more toilet paper than they could ever need and driving from store to store buying pallets of hand sanitizer from employees deemed “essential” who still needed to work three jobs to survive.
I felt history’s pull when food lines wrapped around city blocks and stretched onto freeways for miles.
I felt it seeing communities of color waiting hours in line to exercise the right to vote, which more affluent communities like mine exercise in five minutes or less.
I felt it even stronger when I watched a rainbow coalition come together to decry the long-standing knee on black America’s neck and continue the perpetual march towards equality.
I felt history’s pull when over eighty-one million Americans voted for a black woman as Vice President of the United States.
I feel it now as major hospitals are overwhelmed, bodies pile up in refrigerated trucks, and families are torn apart in the fight between science and fiction.
But of all the times I’ve felt history’s pull in the past year, the most jarring was this week’s insurrection at our United States Capitol during the electoral college certification.
I watched all day in shock breaking away only when my toddler daughter needed more of the undivided attention she’s accustomed to getting from me throughout the day.
The following day, I felt numb and not just because I stayed up through the night to witness the legal conclusion.
I largely detached on the second day. Occasionally, I scrolled through a news site, answered a group text with friends, or popped in on social media, but all day I resisted opening the physical newspaper that showed up in my driveway.
I finally opened it at night after my daughter’s bedroom door clicked shut and I breathed that restorative sigh that feeds tired parents’ souls.
Holding the newspaper in my hand made the stories inside seem so much more permanent and tragic.
I read the headline first, “Democracy Attacked,” then the masthead, “Hartford Courant,” with the logo reading, “Founded in 1764.” I wondered where this edition ranked in the archives of America’s oldest continuously published newspaper.
It’s amazing how ink brings history to life.
An old saying sprang to mind, “may you live in interesting times.”
I’ve long thought this was an Irish blessing but Google suggests it may be an English expression based on an unverifiable “ancient Chinese curse” recognizing that “interesting times” are tumultuous and full of despair.
Several minutes of research produced no definitive origin to the expression.
Since truth no longer matters, I’m sticking with the phrase being a blessing and trying to appreciate that though our challenges right now are varied and significant, they do make for interesting times.
It is our nature to define things through silver linings to shape narratives we can live with.
I’ve seen incredible mental contortions this week towards that end, none of which I’ve found persuasive.
The only comfort I’ve been able to take from our common experience over the past year is that it has deepened my appreciation for much of human history and the art it has inspired. This, in turn, has enriched my understanding of what it means to be human.
I used to read Shakespeare with the same detachment I’d have towards a fantasy novel.
The idea of mad tyrants with sycophantic inner circles enabling and scheming for their own purposes seemed as relevant to my worldview as dragons enamored by the beauty of a neighboring kingdom’s princess.
Suddenly, large parts of human history seem more accessible.
It’s easier to imagine the passions of the French Revolution after seeing mobs rampage through our corridors of power, just as I appreciated the suddenness of Pearl Harbor more after hurriedly evacuating the Capitol on 9/11.
Anti-segregationists’ courage is clearer after seeing the naked face of hate.
The Black Plague is even more relatable after seeing just a fraction of its toll overwhelm modern hospitals to the point that patients in some cities are spilling into the streets and mortuaries are turning away customers because they’re overwhelmed.
We are facing enormous challenges as individuals, as a people, and as a Republic. Challenges that, while unprecedented in our time, are well-known obstacles throughout the human experience.
We live in interesting times, which may be a blessing or a curse – only history will know.
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