The Tricky Past

Hey all.  I owe you an apology.  I went on a long hiatus over Christmas break and haven't really touched my blog since December.  I'm sorry for anyone who went there looking for posts.  Anyhow, a lot has happened since I last wrote.  I had a wonderful Christmas with my family and was reminded just how amazing they really are.  There is nothing quite like coming home.  I don't enjoy leaving home and fighting through loneliness and homesickness, but there is always something so refreshing about coming home.  At least for me, I have a feeling that it is just that kind of reception that is awaiting us in our Father's Kingdom.

Now for the news that most--if not all--of you know about.  Over the break, I started dating the stunningly beautiful Julianne Gough and was privileged to spend a lot of time with her during the past month.  For those of you who don't know Julianne, she is simply amazing.  She's brilliant, beautiful, spiritual, and incredibly kind and caring.  She teaches Art History at LDS Business College and is constantly teaching me things that I didn't have the slightest clue about, not just in terms of art, but life and the gospel.  Simply put:  I love being with her.

On one of my dates with Julianne, she introduced me to a wonderful movie that has given me pause and made me do quite a bit of thinking over the last couple of weeks.  I'm not normally a fan of Woody Allen movies, but if you haven't seen Midnight in Paris, you should.  I don't want to give too much of the movie away, so here is a short and poorly worded synopsis.  It is about a movie writer named Gil Pender, who visits Paris with his fiance while he is in the process of writing a novel.  As a writer, Gil fantasizes about how good it would have been to be an author in Paris during the 1920s when notable writers like Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald (America's Lost Generation) were there writing their masterpieces.  At midnight in Paris, he is actually taken back to the 1920s where he meets several of these characters and interacts with them.

At first, Gil finds the experience scintillating and amazing, and even far superior to the world he is living in in 2010.  But at the end of the movie he comes to a realization that I think is quite valuable.  Gil realizes that as useful as it can be to visit the past, it is problematic to live there, because our views of the past are often based upon a fantasy that ignores certain aspects of reality.  As annoying and even troubling as we often find the present to be, it is the only real time that God has given us to live in and we must make the most of it.

The Book of Mormon contains a classic example of how we sometimes view history, written in the words of the Prophet Nephi, son of Helaman.  Living in one of the most troubling periods of Nephite history, Nephi bemoaned, "Oh, that I could have had my days in the days when my father Nephi first came out of the land of Jerusalem, that I could have joyed with him in the promised land; then were his people easy to be entreated, firm to keep the commandments of God, and slow to be led to do iniquity; and they were quick to hearken unto the words of the Lord--Yea, if my days could have been in those days, then would my soul have had joy in the righteousness of my brethren." (Helaman 7:7-8)

I've read those words over the years and wondered what Nephi's great ancestor Nephi, the son of Lehi, would have thought about them.  Perhaps I am wrong, but I have often felt that the original Nephi (at least the first person we know about named Nephi) would have assured his noble descendent that the past was not quite as good as he had made it out to be.  True, Nephi's society wasn't overrun by secret combinations and high level corruption, but Nephi had plenty of his own struggles to deal with: living in a desert, starving in the wilderness, deadly storms on the ocean, and his own brothers trying to kill him on numerous occasions.  True, Nephi later wrote that his people "lived after the manner of happiness" (2 Nephi 5:27), but Nephi's life had been anything but easy, a fact that his descendent would quickly have discovered had he been granted his wish to live in the days of Nephi, son of Lehi.

Yet here, in the midst of enjoying a glorified and sanitized view of the past, Nephi, son of Helaman, came to a realization that we must all come to sooner or later.  He wrote, "But behold, I am consigned that these are my days" (Helaman 7:9).  He realized that even if he did not necessarily enjoy every aspect of his own lifetime and the things that he was asked to endure, that was the period and those were the challenges (and blessings) that God had allotted unto him, and he must accept them.

As a historian, it is easy for me to live in the past.  At times I find myself struggling to remember that the current year is 2012, not 18--, when I am writing out checks.  Perhaps just as detrimental as living in a sanitized and unrealistic past, is an understanding of the pains of the past and an erroneous belief that they cannot be changed.  I have often found it difficult to let go of past events, past hurts, and past ways of thinking, even when I know in my heart and mind that the present is or at least can be so very different if I make it so.  The entire Gospel is a message about the possibility of change and the reality of newness and redemption.  We can and must learn from the past because the experiences and insights of ourselves and others can be valuable to us.  But even as we make occasional excursions to the past, we must be careful not to keep living there.  While the Atonement will heal us and help us learn from the experiences of the past, it can only be applied in the present, creating in turn a brighter and more beautiful future.

Brett