What makes us who we are? Do you take for granted why you like the things you do? Or, like me, do you sometimes wonder where that interest or desire originated? What seed, planted as a child, germinated into a full-blown obsession that now helps people describe you as special or unique? I wonder sometimes what exactly made me who I am today.
Any of you that have read my blog in the past—or perhaps picked up one of my novels—is fully aware that I love history, especially military history. Okay, so maybe “love” isn’t the right word…perhaps “obsessed” better portrays the frequency with which historical examples sneak into my explanation of the most mundane and modern of current events. While likening the current political situation in the U.S. to end of the Roman Republic is marginally acceptable behavior—certainly within societally acceptable norms—my depiction of a weekend bike repair devolving into a dissertation on periods of foreign control of China over the past millennium isn’t, for some reason, okay. Or “normal,” I’m told … whatever that is!
And so any description of me that doesn’t include “loves history” or “history fanatic” or “please … for the love of all that’s holy don’t bring up anything of historical significance around him” probably doesn’t adequately prepare someone to meet me. And I’m okay with that. I am who I am, and people can either stick around and learn something or, if they have something better to do, can sneak away while I’m describing an ancient Roman water pump! Regardless, I won’t be offended either way.
But the question of how I became that way, what drove a love of history so deeply into my brain (and heart) that I sometimes don’t even notice when its taking over my life has long hovered at the edge of my consciousness.
I vaguely remember visiting Ft. Sumter, in South Carolina, as a young child. I mostly remember the boat ride, and peering through the haze of some 43 years I still see cannons and seagulls. But it didn’t really make an impression on me. Apparently I visited the Alamo as a young child as well—there are pictures of me in classic 70s mother-made-me-wear-it fashion, no less—but I don’t remember it at all. Funny that it would mean so much more to me that I’d visited both sites 20 or so years later.
Thinking back, then, the first time I guess it really meant something to me in the present, that I was someplace of historical significance was while living in then West Germany. I distinctly remember visiting an old ruin of a fort and all but tripping across a tiny information plate. The faded bronze clearly stated that on some date in some year Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte had visited the fortification as part of a larger inspection tour. And that’s when I actually stepped back and said “Whoah!” I was struck by the sudden epiphany that I was standing where Napoleon himself may have once stood, walking the same ground, seeing what he saw … more-or-less. Silly, perhaps, but at the age of 14 then, I became suddenly and irrevocably aware that history was alive, something to be touched and experienced and not merely read in dusty old books. All at once I’d found my passion, and 34 years later it still shows … daily, to the doubtless chagrin of my co-workers!
I also have a strange fascination with Northeast Asian ceramics, especially Japanese pottery, and own a substantial collection from around the country. Yet this ties back to my love of history and the long-running cultural interplay between China, Korea, and Japan, my historical forte if such a thing could be pinned down. Similarly, my following of the way of traditional Korean archery spun off travel and studies of ancient and medieval fortifications in that country. These are interests for which I can easily grasp their origin, can identify both genesis and inspiration.
Yet what about those other things? Why can I not stop buying books, reading articles, and thinking about ancient Rome and Persia? Why do thoughts dwelling on these obscure subjects keep me awake at night, my brain turning over historical possibilities that today matter to less than 1% of 1% of 1% of the world’s population? Honestly, I don’t know, but that too has become part of who I am and so how I talk and behave.
For those of you forced to beat a hasty retreat realizing I was mid-diatribe, I do apologize. To friends, family, and co-workers stuck with no readily available line of withdrawal while I droned on about the Japanese invasion of the Kingdom of Ryu Kyu, I’m sorry. To my subordinates forced to respectfully listen while their boss ate up what little time they had in a given day … well … that’s just life in the Army, but I understand and appreciate the “sacrifice” nonetheless.
Yet, in the end, this is who I am, it’s a part of what makes me … well … me. And I neither can nor should apologize for that. And neither should you. What makes you tick? What keeps you up at night? I don’t mean the anxieties or worries of either extant or future problems, but those all-pervasive interests that seem to permanently occupy such a large portion of your brain that they seep into the most unrelated of conversations? Is it old cars? Weaponry? Gardening? Yoga? What obsesses you? What is it that makes you tick? And do you know why?
A little introspection can be a really positive thing, I think. And a better understanding of ourselves cannot help but increase both our understanding and tolerance of those around us, something currently in very short supply, it would seem.
Now … speaking of those Romans in Gaul … hey! Come back!!
M. G. Haynes