Time goes by . . .

I know it is a sign of age to feel that time is going by too fast, but I am still surprised to see that it is February already and since Christmas seemed just a few weeks ago, Punxatawney Phil's prediction of another 6 weeks of winter doesn't seem that bad. Now, the heat of summer bearing down on us is another issue entirely.

But if you take a moment to consider time and its passage, it can be a shocking and surprising thing. I came across the Beloit Mindset List today, and reading through the 2011 list was as usual a tough thing to wrap your mind around. In case you aren't familiar with it, it is an annual list put together by people at Beloit College that lists realities about the incoming class - what they don't know about, what they have lived their whole lives experiencing, basically what their world view is compared to ours. There are usually about 70 entries ranging from those that are surprising to those that even you don't know. I took the time to have a young woman currently in college who is roughly the age of the Class of 2011 read through the list and see how accurate it really is. I was startled at what she didn't know from the list!

Nelson Mandela has always been free and a force in South Africa. This young person didn't even know who Nelson Mandela is.
Pete Rose has never played baseball. Didn't know who Pete Rose is.
Women have always been police chiefs in major cities. Didn't know there were female police chiefs.
And one I expected, but was still distressed to be proved right:
Tiananmen Square is a 2008 Olympics venue, not the scene of a massacre. Didn't know Tiananmen Square.

History seems to be slipping out of the national conscious and from the school curriculum. Incidents that will stick it your memory forever never even blip on another generation. I can so vividly remember sitting and breathlessly watching the unfolding of the Tiannanman Square protest and massacre, marvelling at the bravery of these young protesters. Just 20 years later, and it is lost in the mists. Back in my school days, we rarely got past the Great Depression, only in my day that was kind of recent history! After all, my parents lived through it, fought in WWII. Now that is as distant from this generation of kids as WWI was to me, and just as shrouded in the dust of ancient history with little obvious relevance to one's life. We all rail against the changes in school curriculum with the drift away from facts and timelines to more touchy-feely experience. But maybe that's not all that bad. This young woman has a more immediate sense of the horrors of war, of the horrors that WWII vets have lived a lifetime with, than I ever could grasp due to a wonderful opportunity to travel with vets to the WWII Memorial in Washington. She interviewed the vets about their experiences, and came away with vivid, personal stories that will stay with her forever, that have deeply affected her attitude about war, and that made the sacrifices made in WWII and every war more immediate and affective than any history text.

So inevitably what is important history and important historical and cultural figures to one generation is not important to another. There are always newer ones taking their place as time hurtles along. I remember some 12 years ago, I was ruthlessly weeding the biography section of the library I was working in at that time - we had run out of space, a constant lament for librarians. I was pulling any that hadn't been read in 5 years, only keeping really iconic historical figures. Someone a generation or so older than me was aghast at the selection I had chosen to discard. So bowing to their concerns, I turned to a group of high school honors students and ran through the group, planning to keep any they had heard of. It was a mind-boggling moment for me and my elder companion. This group knew none of them, and were only too happy to point out others left on the shelves that they hadn't heard of either. It is amazing that we can communicate between generations at all - in truth we have so little in common for a basis of relating.

There is no chance of slowing the race of time, rushing past us, becoming the ever more distant and blurry past. George Santayana is remembered for the famous line "Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it." I think George Bernard Shaw's line "We learn from history that we learn nothing from history" is the perfect counterpoint - the former being the hopeful, the latter being the truth. Should we take comfort that this was being said over 100 years ago? At least modern times aren't unique in neglecting the lessons of history. I will have to ask some kids if they know who either of these Georges are. I will be honest, I haven't a personal clue about who George Santanyana is - will have to look him up!

Music: Best of the Righteous Brothers
Book: The Essential Wisdom of George Santayana, by Thomas Munson
Book: The Dance of Life: the Other Dimension of Time, by Edward T Hall