History is Always in the Making
We are just realizing it now more than ever before.
We are not makers of history. We are made by history
In a time of racial unrest and a fervent march towards equality, this quote is as applicable in 2021 as when spoken by Martin Luther King Jr. in his sermon in 1963.
It’s hard to believe that exactly 4 years ago, to the day, we were on the precipice of a new chapter, a new future, a new beginning. Here we stand, 4 years later, right back on that precipice. Except for this time, we’re standing out looking over a very different edge.
History will be made today. But are we the ones making it?
We tend to float through life as victims of our circumstances — we are reactive to whatever news comes our way, always trying to adapt and reconstruct our mental frameworks to find new coping methods. Our brains quickly accept new bits of information and store them away for later so we can deal with the task at hand. If you’re lucky enough to catch a moment of introspection, you begin to process those bits and try and make sense out of them.
This process works really well when the need to process events greater than ourselves is few and far between. These past 4 years have thrown so much at us that we can’t help but feel that we are no longer in the driver's seat. It’s as if we as a nation collectively started as Freshmen in high school and for 4 years had all our classes in another language that we’ve never spoken before.
These past 4 years have been so unprecedented that even the word “unprecedented” has become a cliche. These past 4 years have been so chaotic that the only coping mechanism is to just…not cope. We’ve disarmed our own healthy ways of processing events to preserve what we’re trying to protect in the first place — our own mental health.
As my friend said in exasperation last week in the face of stringent work deadlines that were being pushed on her desk — “How are we supposed to work during a national coup while wrapped in a pandemic?”. As amusing (and disorienting) as that statement sounds, it’s true. We have been navigating completely uncharted territory with very little guidance.
So what now?
With the wisdom that comes from failure, we are approaching a new era with our eyes wide open. We now see clearly that our present moments make up the fibers that are later woven into a collective tapestry, imperfect in its singularity but beautiful as a whole. The present shifts as quickly into the past as the future morphs into the present. We are made by these disparate moments.
I will carry Dr.King’s words with me as I watch the first female Vice President of the United States being sworn into office. She is made by history — History of so many trailblazing women who fought for equality before her, history of her mother who worked tirelessly as a Breast Cancer researcher — and history will be made by her.
Today, history will be made.
