Bleary but blissful

Cicero once said that not to know history was to remain forever a child, and I am a child in India. 

I am dying to know the history of this place, but somehow it seems far less pressing than the present here. This is in part out of necessity because there are a thousand ways to die in India before noon and within a half-mile radius. No FDA, OSHA, EPA or any of those other agencies that keep us safe at home. Entire families cram together on a motorcycle, grandmas sitting side saddle and babies sleep in the crook in their older sister’s arm while she clings to her father. They weave between the cows and pedestrians on a foot bridge suspended over the breathtakingly blue Ganges. But if there are a thousand ways to die, there are a thousand reasons to live here, in the present out of choice. Be here now. It’s a mantra I chant to myself when my breathing becomes ragged and my hamstrings scream in a forward fold that I think my teacher intends to hold for the rest of my life. I am surrounded by youth, so many beautiful people from all over the world come here. They are wise beyond their years, and they already know to seek after the things that I, thirty years their elder, have only learned to want: simplicity, kindness, enlightenment. I want the kind of wisdom that isn’t contained within my mind, but flows through my body, radiates through my eyes.

As an historian, the past my is my source of wisdom. Better put, it is the source of my authority, because in fact, I use the past in order to advocate for change in the future. I’ve long known that the past doesn’t hold all the answers and though Cicero’s humanitas and Marcus’ Meditations have inspired me to be kinder, wiser, stronger, we ignore at our peril the brutality upon which their way of life was made possible. What does it cost to maintain a philosopher, a historian, a scholar? What does it cost a country that doesn’t? Why are history, literature, music, the arts all under attack in our country? These are the things that make us more fully human, allow us to walk in another’s shoes, feel what they feel, if only for a moment, and imagine their struggles and their joys. Indians feed the pious who wander from one holy shrine to another, seeking enlightenment in their orange holy robes heavy with the dust of the road. Their past lives cheek and jowl with their present, they honor it, it permeates their consciousness. There are problems here, of course, but somehow they seem manageable. Step around the cow in your path; don’t fence it in. Save your excess for holy men and holy cows and those who need it.

The past for this historian is not so easy to forget, and in truth, that’s not why I am here. I am grateful for what has come before because it has sustained me and shaped me and brought me here, to this magical place. The past simply needs to play a smaller role in my life, so that I can quiet it when it whirls through my head unbidden as I sit seeking stillness. In this place saturated with history, I will learn to live right now.