Many people often ask themselves, “What’s so important about the past?” It’s not difficult to find people who question the importance of our history and who believe that things that have already happened should stay in the past, especially at my age. Teenagers will often be the first to tell you that they prefer not to be trifled by our history, and therefore have no mind to preserve it. This unfortunate outlook upsets me more than I could express, for I am a firm believer that we should respect the actions and the legacies of our ancestors who elevated us to where we are today. In school, our history teachers tell us that we must learn from the past in order to succeed in our future. They also say that part of defining what it means to be “American” deals directly with our common heritage. After evaluating the past and the lasting effects it has on us today, I know both of these statements to be true. We must celebrate our American heritage and uphold our responsibility to preserve it.
I believe that our past helps define the people of today; who we are and where we came from are two ideas that are synonymous in my mind. There is so much that we can learn from the past beyond the basic failures and triumphs of our ancestors. We can learn faith from the Puritans, who came to American with the goal of establishing the perfect religious society, a “city on a hill.” We can look to the patriotism shown by the soldiers of the Revolutionary War and the intelligence of our founding fathers, who established a governmental system we still use today. We can admire the leadership of early presidents like George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, and see the courage of Rosa Parks and other civil rights leaders who dared to do the unthinkable in a world of segregation. We can experience compassion from great American poets and philosophers like Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. But above all, we can learn about the ability to love our country from every one of our ancestors who lived in this land. It was with the help of their guidance and determination that the United States has become one of the greatest countries in the world.
Because I understand the significance of our history, I also realize that it is our duty and responsibility to preserve it. While part of us implements this preservation every day with the beliefs we cherish and the choices we make, there is another part of us that needs to work to preserve physical things like historical places and artifacts. As Americans, we have to respect areas like George Washington’s birthplace, and shouldn’t be so eager to compromise our history for the sake of construction another Starbucks to add to the millions that speckle the nation. It is our responsibility to preserve the past so that we never forget where we came from and the sacrifices it took to get us here. We are a nation of prosperity, and as Americans we have to recognize that our heritage and the experiences and precedents established by it, should live on forever.