History has never been my strongest subject because memorizing dates and events seems very boring to me. Although it’s pretty interesting to learn all about these timelines, I just find it difficult to grasp and learn all these information pressed into my brain. For the next two years of my life history class was 60 minutes of daily agony. I didn’t like learning about the holocaust timeline.
That one afternoon changed the whole way I thought about history. Even though it was a bit of a slow day our prof had come to class armed with a question that tickled our brains. “Do you think history repeat itself”? He then asked, yet expectant that his class would respond in usual silence. As anticipated, we did give the professor a blank stare but this time a more intent look on my face, our faces (at least I know all of us had the same reaction). It was then I thought to myself maybe history really does repeat itself? I took a look at the russian revolution timeline and saw a pattern, it was eerily similar to that of the french revolution timeline.
Our teacher gave us something to think about. The social issues we discussed in history class over the last several weeks brought us to our answers. He illustrated his point by referring to past presidents. Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of the United States had been elected for Congress in the year 1846. Alternatively John F. Kennedy was in Congress in 1946, exactly 100 years after Lincon was elected. These facts do not stop the similarities and likeness of paths these two presidents led. Abraham Lincoln was finally elected President in the year1860 which was again an approximate of 100 years when John F. When Kennedy took power as the new president it was 1960. Apart from these facts, these two presidents encountered the same major crisis in Civil Rights and finally, both were assassinated in their terms of service as president and both on a Friday.
I ask myself if everything that happened was just a coincidence? I’d like to believe so, but our history professor made us think even more, an in-depth analysis and scrutiny of the past events. He then asked the question once again “Do you believe that history repeats itself”? I came with an answer I think will forever be etched in my mind, “History doesn’t repeat itself. There may have some flukes of nature and happenstance in the lives of the two presidents that were parallel with each other, but I strongly believe that it was just a product of human’s ability to over generalize. That big of info really makes one think about how the past still can haunt the present, this repeating of mistakes shows us people’s susceptibility to repeating past mistakes.
I knew at the second that what I said was at least partially correct. I saw my professor’s face lit up and that’s enough for me to know that my wild guess is acceptable and that he might as well believed in my viewpoint. What happened that day sparked a little bit of interest in the subject, and now I see that I’m just a small blip in history.
