Following is the piece that Andrew wrote for the “On History” page that I’m about to post. I like how he brings direction and intelligence to my cheesecake art
-Joe

Throughout the course of our lives we make a countless number of decisions. Each and every one, to its own degree paving the way towards our destiny. Every choice affecting the direction of our lives in one way or another.

The consequences of our actions play themselves out every moment of our lives, constantly unfolding into reality.

Into history.

Not history as in that elective course you took sophomore year of college to fulfill your humanities requirement.

History as in what really went down in the past History as in what in the world happened to get things the way they are. How do things all add up to the present?

It is not given life simply by us having knowledge of it, though. History lives despite our knowledge of or interest in it, because it is given life through our actions. History has a life all of its own, apart from the facts contained in the stacks of books which record its progress. We have a responsibility though, not only to monitor the progress of history, to be aware of this mountain of knowledge, but also to understand its implications, to grasp the relationship between one event and another within it, to acknowledge the patterns.

If we can just learn enough about what came before us, then maybe we can understand how it all added up to what we have now.

Maybe if we knew more things for sure about our past, the present would make that much more sense to us, because then we would understand that the present is constantly creating itself out of the past. That each moment is a product of the last. And that each one becomes only what you make of it. What we look at as the future is constantly becoming the present, and the present is all too quickly becoming the past.

If you want to understand the present you have to examine the past. The present is the echo of time and events passed by.

Knowledge of the past is the key It is the key to understanding the present It is the key to preparing for the future.