Portfolio: Essay from mid-term

Nobody is perfect, history is a learning guide, and giving up just for the fear of falling down is unacceptable. The main idea of this passage is saying that once you do something, it can not be undone and is therefore an event that will always be remembered in history. Gerda Lerner is trying to get the point across that what people do with their lives truly matters in the end because someone will always remember what others have done. The author always says that “those who forget the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them”. She believes this to be true but when an event is repeated it does not necessarily occur exactly the same as the first time it happened.

Lerner’s viewpoints seem like the logical ones that most people would agree with. Once something is done, it is impossible to undo. Choices must be made wisely so that there are not any regrets left in the end. More often, people remember the bad events in history over the good and joyful ones. So, when people make mistakes that can not be undone, those memories are stuck in their minds to haunt them until the day they die. To be wise, it is best when committing an extreme action for it to be one that would make a good memory, instead of a bad one for people to look back on in history.

The author states that people can learn from history, whether the events and people were good or bad. If they were good, the present generation can learn to follow the example from history to become as successful as the people were in the past. If the events and people were bad, the people of the present can learn to not do what those people did, and then not make the same dumb mistakes that would lead to a repeated historical event.

“The main thing history can teach [people] is that human actions have consequences”. By learning about other peoples mistakes throughout history, people that are living in the present will know not to do those things again. But sometimes, mistakes are unpreventable because everyone is human and everyone makes mistakes in life. People just have to be willing to accept the consequences and move on. But with the knowledge of history, people can try their hardest to not repeat history by making wise choices to help “determine how future events” will play out in the end.

Sometimes people can not help messing something up. For example, in gymnastics people practice multiple hours every day to become better and better. They spend their entire lives at the gym just so they can be called “the best”. But then, when a competition comes around everything that seemed perfect during practice falls apart in front of the judges. People can’t do everything perfect every time they do it because humans just don’t work that way, they screw up sometimes. People just have to be willing to accept that fact and move on because perfection is nonexistent. Everything happens for a reason. People can choose to learn from their mistakes and the mistakes of others to improve or they can admit defeat. But, history is there to guide them if they choose to let it.