Blackness x Neurodiversity VII: The Wreckage of Your Past
There’s a quote from James Baldwin that is always in my mind, and it’s something that I’ve always thought about even before encountering that quote:
“History is not the past. It is the present. We carry our history with us. We are our history. If we pretend otherwise, we are literally criminals.”
Something we often hear in society is “don’t dwell on the past.” People believe that if you forget about your past, the world is essentially your oyster.
It’s literally bullshit.
Our past shapes and defines us as much as our present does, and, as the saying goes, “those who don’t learn from their past are doomed to repeat it.”
There’s also a quote from Mark Twain that goes “history doesn’t repeat itself but it often rhymes,” which is true.
I’ve often found myself in nearly identical situations since life is cyclical; however, to those on the outside looking in, it seems like I’m making the same mistakes over and over again. That couldn’t be further from the truth.
It’s easy to make that judgment if you don’t know what you’re looking at and don’t care to understand what you’re looking at; however, like Princess Weekes once said, “the inability to see nuance while asking for nuance will fuck you every time.”
Never have I ever been in a situation where that has not been true.
I’m someone who is committed to learning from my past, from other peoples’ pasts, from history as well. It’s literally a treasure trove of information just there for free if you’re willing to look for it, to study it, to critique it, to learn from it, and to grow from it.
