Tyler Kendall
Features Editor
Future: it is a word that stirs hopes, dreams and nightmares. Even within our own high school, it’s hard to read between the smudges in planners indicating the different tests and papers due every other day. Shoulders ache from the amount of textbooks carried around and heads ache from the amount of times PowerSchool is checked between class periods, weighing futures on a cumulative GPA displayed through a phone screen.
In the midst of all this obsession over the future, there was one time this year I felt I was able to stop and contemplate the past. My history teacher, Mr. Webb, suggested we, “bring up the ideas of the past because it is a reflection of the present.” I was impacted by how true his words are.
Once this idea was brought up, it was easy to see how countless amounts of literary works have been written on this principle. One example is The Crucible by Arthur Miller, which was written in 1953. The book was centered on the Salem Witch Trials in the late 1600s, but it was a hidden tale about the Red Scare and Cold War. Or take Gone with the Wind written by Margaret Mitchell in 1936. The novel was based around the Civil War era, but one can argue that the movie is really a reflection of the Great Depression time period.
Even recently, we see this theme in everyday life. Why do you think the movie Lincoln was released in November, near the time of the past election? In the movie the viewer sees Lincoln unite a divided country, and in the present, America was looking for a leader to do just that.
This concept of using the past as almost a “mask” to convey meaning about the present is not just used by society, but also by individual students as well. High school is a time of huge change and transition. All of a sudden you are engulfed in a world of what-will-be’s. What will you do after high school? What are you going to study? What profession will you be? What are you going to do with the rest of your whole entire life? It is as if the independence we all thought we had is suddenly nowhere near what we will soon obtain.
So perhaps those “what-will-be” pressures are why students look back to their past to reflect on the present. It’s not just because we want to feel like we did back then, but because we actually do feel like we did back then. In scary times, it can be natural for us to retreat back to the past, where we felt like we had more control over our lives or we were just more familiar with the awe of the unknown world around us.
Take throwback Thursday for instance. Why is #tbt so popular? Logging on every Thursday to see baby pictures or adventures from last summer isn’t just to remember good times, but perhaps because our inner emotions are coinciding with feelings of those days. The days when we were young and the world seemed wide with sometimes scary endeavors for us to pursue. There was always this aspect of the unknown, whether we took it into our small hands and ran or we hid cautiously from it behind the adults in the room.
Although we’re big bad high schoolers, we feel the vulnerability of the unknown like when we were younger. Now, I’m not making any sweeping psychological assumptions here, I’m just saying maybe we indulge in #tbt and reminisce about the past because somewhere deep down we all feel like little kids again. Not little kids in the judgment free, holding hands and singing rhymes way- but the little kid way that was shrouded with innocence and uncertainty about the world.
