History Is Important by Lindsey

History Is Important by Lindsey - April 2019 Scholarship Essay

We are constantly asked, “Why is history so important?” and we often receive the same answer, “So history doesn't repeat itself,” but what many don't realize is that history is the primary foundation of our country and through generations, history has defined and shaped our society, culture, and how we think and process as a community. Earlier in my life I struggled academically with history and finding a common interest in it, but as I have grown older I’ve began realize the complexity and the weight it has carried throughout generations of my family.

As a child, I believed the same thing as every young child would believe, that history is boring and meaningless. I had never excelled in the subject, so like most people, I eventually stopped trying to find connection and gave up, and rather than studying I sat down and stared at a single page for hours, trying to comprehend the reasoning of learning something so “useless.” History was like a dictionary without order, and it was too complicated to try to understand, but as I’ve grown older in my life I began to realize the significance of complexity of the narrative of the world. History was something I could really create a connection with to my biological background and how my family has become who we are, because like every person, I desired to learn more of who I am and how I became to be.

The antiquity of the world was like a storybook, with each story leading up to the next. Each event has had a cause and effect, and its effect would begin with the birth of a new generation of children leading up to now. This newfound ideology has helped me set the cornerstone of my interest in history, and the more new connections I have built have helped me realize a more emotional aspect of the subject’s significance and the role that I play in it. Developing a new set of principles has helped me overcome the feelings of ignorance I felt in the past towards history, and because of this, I have learned that every event, no matter how big or small, that has ever came to be has been a new story waiting to be finished, and that every finished story was the beginning of the next, continuously being written anew, over and over, before each story reaches an end.