What is History?

 

"The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see."

 

- Winston Churchill

 

 Our histories lie beyond the inevitability of change. The truths, the lies, the stories of humankind exist beneath the sheath of evolution. They are patterns that rhyme but not repeat. They are patterns within patterns. Patterns that affect other patterns. Patterns that reflect what we have created and destroyed. What we call today anarchy, are patterns we cannot discern. What we find random today, are patterns we cannot fathom. It's a point where our memories meet documentation and our imperfections meet our inadequacies.

 

History is the story of how we changed. Over time and space. The crafting of thoughts from the past that we desperately try to reinstate in our present. The tendency to reason our future on the basis of how we've been living so far, how our stories had been. The fact that we 'will' depends upon what we 'had'. It is how we study our behavioural and societal patterns left behind in the sands of time. How civilisations rose and fell, myths were believed and vanished, kings reigned, empires were captured, great wars were fought, lives were lost, women were exploited, governments formed, peace was established and how the world progressed forward till yesterday. History marks the watershed moments of the changing course of time that we relate to our actions. It is a collection of events, the discovery of shreds of evidence, the memory of truths, the writing of our past, presentation of facts and organisation cum interpretation of information about these facts, evidence, moments and writings.

 

In the words of Edward Halliet Carr, "History is a continual process of interaction, a dialogue between the historian in the present and the facts of the past and the relative weight of individuals and social elements on both sides of the equation." It's a congregation of thoughts that encapsulate the intricacies of veritable societies, the cultures and traditions of people and how they developed over time forming a nostalgia around the nuclei of facts, that time affects. Everything that happened in the past does not qualify as history because they have no bearings in the present. History, on the other hand, is past encountered in our present, a stream of arguments and notions embedded in the stories of the past that pave a way of learning into the future.

History depends upon the way how its narrated. How it shall be known totally depends on how it is going to be historiographed and thus history becomes relative, in its core-est sense, owing to which, there are so many views on different aspects of history. It focuses on the accounts of grave changes across our past that have affected the political, social, economic and psychological conditions of the human race. History is multi-dimensional. The ways in which it can be interpreted are unknown and that makes its study fascinating. Political, social, economic, scientific, technological, medical, cultural, intellectual, religious and military developments are all a part of history and share an equal space of importance. History, over the years, has become a path for reminiscing bygone days to understand what is yet to come.

History affects how everyday policies are formed, they're a witness of what should be done and what should not. It opens our mind to questioning, teaches us to research, examine, revise and then re-examine. It is a wheel for the nature of human is predominately changing. History is always written wrong and that requires it to be rewritten, making it immoral and ever-living in our lives. We cannot escape history, the more we try to run from it, we come closer. We are living in history and history is living in us and it is who we are, why we are the way we actually are. History is closest to our memory and we cannot erase our memory, at least not within our lifetime.

Author :

Deep Acharya

1st Year, History, KMC.

Deep calls himself a student, a learner and a researcher. He likes to debate and write what he feels about life and this world. Words are what he loves to play with and in his words, "history with global policing and international relations add worth to my life."