Study the History of Something

I’ve always seemed to love history of some sort… any sort. I was reading at three and had the U.S. Presidents memorized by age four. My dad would trot me out in front of his friends at the Ford Tractor shop on Lockeford Street to list the presidents. I was born to parents when my dad was 45 and my mother was 33. I immersed myself in their history… World War II history, music, fashion, and design while also drinking from the well the world provided for me in the ’60s and ’70s.

Why is history important? Why is it of value? It gives you something to talk about with others. It allows you to connect with those of “like mind.” History is a social tool. Because it is a common space where disparate individuals can meet, one briefly overrides blocks that prevent us from easily connecting. In overriding these blocks, we confront issues relative to social anxiety disorder (which ultimately, I think, is the terror of speaking and not feeling heard). A like mind loves what you love and knows what you know. Not completely. Just enough. Would you like it any other way? You now have a friend or acquaintance in intellect—someone to talk to, same as you.

There is also value in the sense of transcending time. An example of this is narrowing the distance between ages to something closer to now and knowing—like the light of stars at night arriving to your eyes “now.” The light of one star took 1,000 light-years to reach you. Another light arrives from a star that doesn’t exist anymore. Transcending time increases your scope of who you can relate to.

I worked as a butcher from 2018 to 2022. I was twice as old as everyone I worked with. One worker asked me questions as he washed dishes and I stocked shelves. He was curious, wanting to know. He trusted me (or at least I felt this). His questions were sincere. Another worker was in his early twenties. He was fun, adept in culinary skills and knowledge, and chock full of his own hubris. His historical knowledge lay in his knowledge of music that went back to the early 1950s.

I sensed that this knowledge… his immersion into music… not only expanded his scope of intelligence, it also expanded his scope of relationships. He could hold an interesting conversation with me, and I with him, in spite of the age difference. This scope is pragmatically useful. It heightens your ability to be seen and connects you with people on a deeper level. You are seen as a person with nuance—or at least capable of it.

So pick your passion. Explore it. Go down the rabbit hole with it. Go back into the depths of it all. You will find that, in some mysterious way, it begins to connect you to everything.