What is life?

Jordan, Kate and I met at Panera on Saturday to discuss the Fasolt text. We decided that history is what we create in our history books, conversations, and social experiences that we encounter throughout our lives. History can mean different things to different people depending all aspects of their lives. For example, I grew up in a pre-dominantly white, upper class area and the things that I was taught throughout my childhood is most likely different than what someone from an inner-city, more diverse area was taught. We felt that everyone has a different experience with history, which leads to a bias of what individual’s preconceptions are about history. However, one thing is certain. There is always a past, a present, and a future of time. History is the documentation, what has been written, and the past is something that happened. “If we know anything about the past at all, it is only because we have some knowledge ht there exists some past of which the sources speak to us before we even start to examine them (67).” The past is everything, and history is just a small glimpse of what the past is. Without the past, there would be no history, knowledge, or evidence that can be studied or written about. The present is here and now, what we are experiencing at this moment. It is “undocumented, unknown, and undead (70)”, a source of which we live in. The Future, an aspect of the present, has the ability to change in the freedom of time.

We ended with the quote, “no one can possibly know where they came from, much less where they are going, unless they know already where they are (78).” We saw this more as a life inspirational quote saying that the past changes depending on who you are and what you experience. You have to know your own identity, and strengths before you are able to realize what things from the past mean to you, and what the future holds for you. It is merely a matter of self-realization and experience.