Something that I have always wanted to do is to experience the entirety of human kind. I don't just mean traveling anywhere and everywhere, although I do want to do that, I also mean the entire history of human kind. I know that it is absolutely impossible to live for eternity, but I would love to have done so. The things that the world has seen, what we have learned and created, the ways that we have evolved not only as creatures but also the things that we have created.
I have always been obsessed with history and the past and how humans behaved, what they wore, I love to people watch whenever I am out in crowds.
One of the points of history that really always intrigues me the most in World War II and a few decades that followed. The Second World War tore up countries, families, schools, entire civilizations. In America, if you were a male the age of 17 or older, your name was in for the draft. Families would sit at home and wait to hear on the radio or watch on tv to see if their son, brother, father, cousin, best friend, husband, boyfriend, themselves, got drafted. It created terror and panic, never knowing when you would be safe or if you were being shipped out. The draft was still around for the next few decades as well for other wars such as the Korean or Vietnam wars. There was almost nothing that could prevent you from going.
These days, young men and women willingly and gladly sign up to go to war. Sure, there were some in the past that felt it was their duty, their right, their privilege to go fight for 'Uncle Sam'... but those were the ones who didn't know what it could do to you - those were the men who had an easy way out because Daddy was a lawyer, or they were taught that it was the highest honor to have.
I'm not saying anything negative about veterans - they are some of the bravest people that walk this space rock we live on and they deserve the best treatment in the world. They not only sacrificed their bodies to war (not always coming back whole), but they sacrificed their minds.
Being shoved into a war at the ripe age of 18, having spent your whole life up to that point being loved and cared for (in most cases) regardless of what your social standing or race was, really messed you up. So many soldiers then and now have come back from war with no visible injuries or scars. But the ones that hurt the most are the internal ones. Being shipped to a foreign country, being forced to gun down innocent people, being scared every single moment of every single day..... I can't even imagine how taxing that would be on someone.
In the past, it was very easily even worse. Mental illnesses have had such a stigma in our past that only now are people being treated with respect. If you already had a preexisting condition and then were sent into war.... there's no telling how much damage that did and has done.
Being forced to stay at home as well, knowing that you brother, father, uncle, best friend, husband, was in the middle of a war zone.... having constant anxiety about when someone might show up on your door-step with a letter and dog tags.... having your entire life ripped apart by the start of a war. For the most part, it's impossible for me to imagine waking up one morning and having that happen. Except it kind of did. The draft has not been in place for many years now though, so that has never been a worry for my generation or even the previous one, really. But there are children in this world, in America, that have never known a peaceful day. Granted the war has never come to our soil and without the draft, without it being a full-scale World War, it is nowhere near as bad.
But I wish I could have been there, in the past. Not only to experience it (maybe because I'm crazy because who wants to experience that kind of terror) but to be there for those who needed a shoulder to cry on. I wish I could have been in every single moment of history, the experience it for myself, to better understand why parents are the way they are, to know and be able to say 'I understand' to someone telling me a story and actually be able to understand.
I am a seeker of knowledge and I feel like the past is the best knowledge that we could ever have as humans. Sure, we technically already have the knowledge of what was learned and the facts (or false statements) of what happened, but I feel like experience is the truest teacher of them all. Without experience you have nothing - you have not lived.
One of my goals for 2016 is to travel outside of the country, which is something that I have never technically done. I've only ever been to 12 states in the United States and I have been to the Bahamas twice, stepping onto two islands for no more than 2 hours at a time (got injured on the first one 90 minutes in and the other I was in a wheelchair from said injury). I have not done any kind of crazy roadtrip across the country, I have never gotten to study abroad (no matter how many times I wish I have), I have not sneaked out to go to a concert or party in the middle of the night, I barely broke the law when it comes to underage drinking. I have never felt like I have ever experience life or the world. Sure, I've been all over the state of Florida, it's a huge state. Yet I still haven't even been to Capitol. I am finally going this month, at the ripe age of 26. Finally, a trip to the panhandle.
But this year, I will travel, I will live, I will love, I will experience life like I never have before.
This post was originally to talk about my love for history and wanting to have all of those experiences of the world, but I guess what I really wanted to get out was that since I can't, I'm going to do it this way. The only way that I can - exploring, loving, creating, and living.
