Blog # 5: If I Were to Spend a Day With Anyone in History, Who Would It Be?

Blog # 5: If I Were to Spend a Day with Anyone in History, Who Would It Be? 

            History. That word can mean so many things. It can mean the great hurricane Sandy or it can mean the boreal Ice age. More often than not, it is the humans that shape history. The humans, (no doubt) are the crux that creates our history. Another fact that many individuals realize is that it tends to be the people closest to us that shape our lives. If I were to spend a day with anyone in history, who would it be? It would be the people that are closest to me. My parents.

It seems silly wanting to talk to my parents when I could talk to Albert Einstein or Harry Potter. Sure, these people are significant to society however, they are trivial to me. I would want to bring my parents from the past and spend a day with them when they were 13. It would be very interesting for numerous reasons. Firstly, it will help me to understand how they grew up to be the people they are today. Bring my teenage parents to the future would also be quite entertaining. Lastly, I would be able to see what effect ‘past’ them would have on ‘present’ them.    

My parents were two very different people. My mother was one of top mathematician in Serbia for her age category and she lived in a small town in Serbia. My father was one of the top athletes in his and many other generations as well. Unlike my mom, he lived in the biggest city in Serbia; Belgrade. My grandfather died when my father was 8 years old and after that event his childhood was difficult and ridden with uncertainty. In conversing with my young parents I would hope to find motives that drove them forward. Motives don’t always come easily. Sometimes they are found in the individual’s natural ability and other times they are found in the person’s characteristics and their interactions with other people. I would want to spend a day with my adolescent parents to see what was driving them forward to become who they have become. Maybe my mother was not always a quite person? Maybe my father was not as smart as he says he was? Who were their friends? What kind of mischief they did? How they felt about their parents at teenage age? What were their thoughts and hopes? People are always changing. These changes are what shape us throughout our lives. By observing my relatives I would have better perspective on how events impact us for the rest of our lives. How these events turn us into who we are.

Wouldn’t it be interesting to watch my parents unexpectedly meet with their younger selves?  We know that we often critique people that we do not know. It would be fascinating to watch people judge themselves with the same standards as they do for everyone else. When they judge somebody else, their reasoning are much more sharp than if it were them who were doing it. Would my parents take notice of the good characteristics they see in their younger selves or would they let the imperfections slide for they know that they were no better when they were children? They would also discover more about themselves and how they became who they are because in order to shape someone else, you should know your own history first. In addition, it would be amusing to meet my parents. They were remarkably different, nobody would have dreamed of them being married!

If I were to spend a day with my parents from their adolescent years, not only would it fulfill my curiosity, but it would also benefit me. I only confidently know one way of nurturing a family and that is the way my family raised me. When I see how they behaved then and compare to how they behave now, my development might be exceptionally different. Perhaps I will choose to discipline my children differently. This all depends on how I reflect back to my childhood.

There are many amazing people in our world (Nelson Mandela, Craig Kilberger, Mr.Samec, to name a few) but the people that we think will change or influence our lives are sometimes very different and distant from us. “Frequently, we get attached to these amazing people and attachments lead to expectations and expectations lead to disappointments.” The people that know you best are the people that have been there with you from the start. Doesn’t it make sense to be with them from start right to the end? So if I could modify the question, I’d change it to, “If I could spend every day with an amazing person, who would it be and why?