American Historical Association essay by William McNeill “Why Study History”.

"Memory is not something fixed and forever. As time passes, remembered personal experiences take on new meanings. A bitter disappointment may come to seem a blessing in disguise; a triumph may later turn sour, while something trivial may subsequently loom large-all because of what happens later on. Collective memory is quite the same. Historians are always at work reinterpreting the past, asking new questions, searching new sources and finding new meanings in old documents in order to bring the perspective of new knowledge and experience to bear on the task of understanding the past. This means, of course, that what we know and believe about history is always changing. In other words, our collective, codified memory alters with time just as personal memories do, and for the same reasons.”

I remember reading McNeil's Essay during my undergrad historical methods class and being struck by the same quote. I recall thinking about how often we are told, "These are the best days of your life" as children and teens and how we felt those who were telling us this were wrong. Now looking back through the rose colored glasses of nostalgia, those were the best days of our lives. We struggle with bills and family, work and home life, and wish for those easier times all the while the older generation is telling us, "These are the best days of our lives."

Dr Dan Dourghty, head of the LSSU History Dept where I received my BS, often said the greatest enemy of the historian is memory; so much of history relies on what we choose to remember. He would talk about the great and happy memories he had as a child growing up in Ireland during WWII and how his memories were a stark contrast to the poverty and terror the war really brought to his homeland. So while he lived through and experienced firsthand WWII in Ireland, he could not give a full picture of what life was like because of what he chose to remember.