" How do you stop
creating the worthless past—day, hour, minute—
the place forgetting us, the backward-looming
mist we couldn’t see when we were in it? "
-Denis Johnson, from “The Past,” The Veil (Alfred A. Knopf, 1987)
i think we as modern humans have a tendency to forget that historical people were also humans who had thoughts and feelings and dreams just like we do
bear in mind that i’m mostly interested in medieval english history, but… do you really think that all women suffered miserable, joyless lives? that no man ever loved his wife? that no gay person ever lived in peace? that no child ever grew up to live a life they loved? that no parent ever saw their disabled child and cared for them anyway? that nobody ever had sex, and enjoyed it? that no priest was ever truly virtous, that nunneries were always places where women were sent away to be locked up? do you really think that it was just suffering day in, day out, unless you were the richest of the rich? do you really think that simply living in a different time made people stupid, senseless, violent? do you really think that people living in the past were so different from us, that they never had thoughts and feelings and dreams to rival our own?
do you really think that people in the past were not people?
I’m convinced that nothing has changed in terms of the human condition, and nothing ever will <3
ALT
