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LightHearted Musings - History is a Vast Early Warning System
Posted by Dr. Molly Roberts on September 12th, 2008
History is a vast early warning system
-Norman Cousins
Don’t you just love this quote? I do, partly because I’m a history buff (history nut I sometimes say). I think that every Presidential candidate should be a history nut as well. If they were, we would avoid tremendous amounts of pain, war and anguish.
Our ancestors are our greatest teachers, not because they were more brilliant or more noble. In fact, they were no different from you or me, making decisions to the best of their ability and not knowing what impact their decisions would have on the future. They are our teachers simply because they have already blazed the trails of both success and failure. We waste so much of our time reinventing the wheel when all we need to do is turn around to see that wheel already made and waiting for us to make use of it.
There are very few problems in this life that haven’t already happened in some similar form in the past. I will stand by this statement even with the tremendous technological advances that we are all living through because most of our contemporary problems are still mainly related to how well we get along with each other. This is an area with some of our greatest failures, but ironically, it’s also the area where we most shine. We could save ourselves a lot of time and heartache by studying the successes and failures of those who have come before us in order to learn how to “do life well.”
No matter how well we do with this challenge, we will most certainly be our children’s teachers. We are all quite literally the future’s ancestors. So what do you want your own legacy to be?
Dr. Molly
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