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the Sun, 2009. Print. Print.

Morrison, Toni.  Beloved: A Novel. New York: Knopf, 1987. Print.

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AMERICA. N.p., 1970. Web. 11 Nov. 2016.

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If anybody, anywhere, wants to progress with their lives in a meaningful way, they will need to be mindful of both the past and the present.  Having a solely past focused mindset means that they are not acting to the full extent of their abilities, whereas having a solely present focused mindset means that they will lack perspective, and are apt to make mistakes.  However, if people incorporate both the past and the present into their daily lives they are more likely to be able to better connect with other people and to steer their lives in a way that is the most favorable for  them and others, hopefully making the world a better place.

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In order to properly process the present and the past, it is necessary to regard both with an equal amount of importance and impact.  The Day of the Dead, practiced in some parts of western Mexico, celebrates the past, yet not in any strict fashion.  Practitioners indulge the bereaved in their loved one’s favorite foods, and have picnics in cemeteries, but while this holiday, rife with superstition and mysticism, may seem out of place in the modern world, the practitioners will often admit that they don’t actually believe in these things, and that the festival is meant for the living, interpreting it as being a reconciliation between the past and the present.  Slavery is also deeply rooted in American culture, and its’ scars can still be felt, even hundred of years laters.  This, of course, does not mean that present-day America is completely consumed by this travesty.  If people were unable to move past this, our country wouldn’t have developed in the power that it is today.  Yet, at the same time, if we did not take this horrifying event into account as we moved forward, it’s possible that we could have made the same mistakes.  The past has an important part to play in providing us with insight into the world, and giving us the opportunity to make the present a better place, but we must be mindful of both of them in order to take advantage of this.

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Unfortunately, it is not enough to only be aware of the present either, as this holds many of the same flaws.  The tragedy of Romeo and Juliet (Shakespeare & Gibson, 1992) holds similar themes to those seen in The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald & Wolkenstein, 2013), most notably, a prominent obsession with controlling time, but while Gatsby is enamoured with the idea of restoring the heroic past, Romeo and Juliet are preoccupied with maintaining the present, because their futures are bleak, however this mindset actually denies both any future at all.  The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald & Wolkenstein, 2013), however, also exemplify this type of flagrant disregard of foresight.  It takes place in the roaring twenties, a time marked with rampant extravagance and bookmarked by the Great Depression, the worst period of economic collapse in the history of the United States.  When the Great Gatsby was written, F. Scott Fitzgerald didn’t know what was to come, but the book certainly reads like prophecy, with his description of Daisy and Tom’s vast carelessness, and the looming sense that this is not a party we will be able to drive home from.  Earlier in my life, I had a similar experience with a present focused position mindset.  My early experience with death and the pain associated with my past led me to completely disregard it.  However, eventually I was able to realize that obsession with the present was extremely self destructive, and was denying me a future.

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Human culture often can seem to be obsessed with the past and ”the glory days”, but there are also a myriad of works that warn against this obsession.  Beloved (Morrison, 1987) is one such novel, detailing the life of the ex-slave Sethe, who is haunted, both literally and figuratively by her past and the horrific abuse she had to endure at Sweet Home.  Her inability to relinquish the past lead her and her daughter to become reclusive and ultimately shunned by the community.  Even worse, she is stuck reliving her worst days, pushing away a kindred spirit in the form of Paul D, in favor of the company of Baby Sugg, a woman who died 11 years prior, and the spirit of a child she murdered.  It is only after she takes a proactive approach, and fights back in defense of the present, that Paul D comes back into her life and the entire community come to forgive her.  The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald & Wolkenstein, 2013) is another one of these ‘warning novels’, detailing the fall from grace of Jay Gatsby, and focusing on his fixation on the past.  At release, it was popular opinion that Gatsby achieved his success because of his commitment to the past.  This commitment also gave him charisma, through his emulation of the old aristocracy, with his insistence on using phrases like ‘old sport’ constantly, and his devotion inspire Nick, who gets swept up in the idea that “He had waited five years and bought a mansion -- so he could ‘come over’ some afternoon.” (Fitzgerald & Wolkenstein, page 63), but it should also be noted that his involvement with bootleggers and disregard of its consequences led directly to his character assassination, and his obsession with Daisy also causes his literal assassination later on.  Plus, the idea of Gatsby is given a neat counterpoint in the form of Tom Buchanan, a man who is described as “One of those men who achieved such an acute limited excellence at twenty-one that everything afterwards savors of anticlimax.” (Fitzgerald and Wolkenstein, page 11).  Ultimately, however, Gatsby does not want to recreate the past, but to create his nostalgic interpretation of the past.  It’s not enough that Daisy should love Gatsby, she must also have never loved Tom.  Gatsby and Sethe demonstrate that being consumed by the past denies you a future, as the past will inevitably be coloured by the present, and refusing to take the present into account is disastrous.

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City Called Heaven - Salt Lake Vocal Artists

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The Salt Lake Vocal Artists perform "City Called Heaven" by Edward Boatner arranged by Josepine Poelinitz live in concert on July 26, 2011 in Libby Gardner concert hall, under the direction of Dr. Brady Allred. This was the Vocal Artists Bon Voyage concert prior to their Argentine tour and performance at the 9th International World Choral Symposium.

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The past is an interesting creature; sometimes loved, sometimes loathed, and always divisive, but something that all historians can agree upon, is that it is pointless to interpret the past without applying it to the present.  Almost as pointless as it would be to ignore it completely.  In order to get the best use out of both the present and the past, we have to look at them as a single entity, and understand how they interact with each other.