History is a funny thing.
Because it already happened we tend to think it is what it is, that it’s set in place.
But, if you’ve ever watched an old video of yourself, you know that we don’t remember things exactly as they happened. And what about when the video ends? Can you give a play-by-play of what came next?
These blank spaces. These misremembered moments. There are a lot of them – holes in a mismatched quilt.
If the goal of history is comfort and warmth, it’s understandable that we cut our quilts apart, gather the most whole pieces — the ones we enjoy viewing — and sew them back together.
We seem not to mind that the original pattern is lost, that we are being fooled by the warmth, and that the quilt was never ours.