Ancient Wonder
If I'm being entirely honest, I have never liked history. You can ask my high school AP World History teacher, Mr. Edwards (Hey Mr. Edwards!). If he remembers me, I am sure what he would remember most was my distaste for the subject he taught and loved.
I dragged myself through the class, could hardly pay attention most days, jumbled up the dates and people and dynasties. It just didn't make sense why so many of the events that happened in the past were such a focal point to our education.
Even a few years later in college, I had similar thoughts in my history class. Why does it really matter if we know any of this information? To say the least, my history grades weren't really that spectacular.
As I've gotten out of school, I've started to, slowly become interested in learning the history of different places.
While I was over in Europe it was astonding to me just how much history we were apart of every single second. Whether we were walking down a cobblestone street, standing outside of Shakespears' Globe, seeing landmarks that have been apart of a skyline for decades, or even walking through ruins of castles and colleseums.
During our stay in Bristol, I was chatting with one of my friends about the history of Europe. She said that the States are so young compared to the rest of the world. It didn't really seem like it, to me at least, until I sat with it for a bit. It didn't strike me in a historical sense, just how young the States are, instead I started thinking about age.
In the States (and many other parts of the world) we idolize our youth. We are bombarded with products in the media every second of every day on ways to look like we're 18 (or younger) again. We're shown skin care products, make up, clothes. We're shown that if we buy this type of car or this type of clothing, we'll feel like we're young and in love.
We live in a world where everyone is obsessed with age and youth and the eternal search for a way to stay young. A way to stop the external affects of aging.
And here I was, for a month, traveling to some of the oldest parts of Europe, delving into the history that I scoffed at for years because it didn't make sense for me to learn it. Exploring the nooks and crannies of castles that were left standing after wars, lookout houses that have delapidated stairwells and trees growing in them, colleseums that once housed fighting and more, ancient cities that were built to walk, not drive. I couldn't understand why it so important to want to be young.
It began to boggle my mind just how much we crave to stay young, how much money and time we put into products that will help reduce the effect of aging on our phyiscal selves like ways to reduce the lines on our faces, the white and greys in our hair. When the fact was, I and hundreds of thousands of other people traveled hundreds of thousands of miles to explore these really old parts of the world. It wasn't the young parts that had the hours long wait to go in and explore the building that had hardly a speck of dust and perfect paint. No, it was the buildings that were half destoryed, caked in dust, who's walls tell stories from the graffiti of long ago prisoners; these were the buildings that we all waited to see.
What would happen if we stopped fearing age? What would happen if we started to treat age the way we treat the history of some of the most famous cities, the ruins that we all flock to? Would we actually want to get older? Would we be excited when we see a white or grey hair? Would we laugh more, smile more, not be afraid to live more?
I don't have all the answers, Lord knows I get nervous each year around my birthday. But maybe, just maybe, if we start looking at age in the way that we look at ruins and ancient cities, with wonder, it won't be something that we run from, it'll be something that run to.