We traveled a lot when I was a kid. My
dad loved to see new places. We lived in France, and on weekends, we
would visit different cities in Europe. We would stand in front of
some monument, and he would start telling me the story of how that
monument came to be. Only I think he forgot that I was just a kid. He
would use words I didn't quite understand and his stories had too
many characters. My eight-year-old brain couldn't process all the
information, and none of it made sense to me. All he really
accomplished with his history lessons was make me feel history was
complicated and alien. I grew up detesting history and everything
related to it.
For the longest time, history was my
least favorite subject in school, and I avoided history books – and
anything that involved history in any way – at all cost. Then I
went to university when I was in my late teens and studied French
literature. You can't really study literature without knowing some
history, so I forced myself to read the history books I despised and
even managed to get good grades, but I still secretly disliked
history.
About a decade ago, I found the
complete set of The Story of Civilization by Will Durant at a
library bookstore where used books are sold at affordable prices. I
decided to get the books and give them a try. I ended up reading all
of them. If you're not familiar with the series, it's over ten
thousand pages.
Since I joined the writing community in
March 2019, I've met people who write different genres. I noticed I was
still staying away from history, and not just nonfiction. Even historical fiction was one
of my least favorite genres. As I interacted with various writers, I
met Marian L Thorpe, someone whose tweets I enjoy reading and who writes historical fiction, a
genre I would normally avoid. However, a short while ago, because I admire her, I read a sample of one of her books, Oraiáphon, and found
myself hooked. My interest in historical fiction surprised me. I'd
always stayed away from such books.
Around the same time, I was reading a
book by Eckhart Tolle, and I decided to trace back one of his
references to its origin. I looked up the book and tried to find it in
the library catalog, hoping to borrow it. The only resource my search
got me was a DVD titled Life Lessons from the Great Books. When I
picked it up at the library (I'm taking the opportunity here to thank
the librarians who tirelessly work behind the scenes to provide this
huge service even though the libraries are officially closed and only
“curbside pickup” is available.), I noticed it's a collection of
six DVDs, each containing six lectures by the late Professor J. Rufus
Fears from University of Oklahoma. If you don't know him, google him.
You'll find he has lots of talks on YouTube. He's a historian and an
excellent storyteller. I watched all thirty-six of his lectures
and then watched them all again, and I enjoyed every minute of it.
Sometimes our beliefs and opinions are
based on how things were initially presented to us. It doesn't hurt
us to keep an open mind and give ourselves the opportunity to look at
things again and maybe re-evaluate them from a different perspective.
I know for a fact that if I had stayed stubborn in my opinion of
history and hadn't kept an open mind, I would have never read The
Story of Civilization or the sample of that historical fiction and I
would have turned that DVD off as soon as I realized it would be
lectures on history. I'm glad I got over my initial beliefs. In the
end, I'm the one who benefits from knowing everything I gave myself
permission to learn.