thoodleoo:

be kind to historians. they do a thankless job, digging through layers and layers of artifacts, letters, and dates, only to be told that their work is not as important as others’. their paper-cut hands don’t seem impressive to most, the sign of the leisurely scholar. but they carry the burden of mankind’s memory- shepherds of souls, they rescue the lost from lethe’s devouring streams. the doctor may scoff, the engineer laugh, the physicist sneer. yet no one has found immortality’s secret except the historians, who delve into textbooks and bring people back to life.

be kind to historians. they are a sensitive, though not fragile, sort. they have wept for those whom they can never meet, for those who have been dust for centuries before our time. in some ways these lives are meaningless to them, vague shadows of people who once walked upon the earth, perhaps something like the people we know them as, perhaps not. time snatches some details away, corrupts others. but the historians collect them all and say, you were a person once. let us get know you as best as we can.

be kind to historians. they are, as schlegel once wrote, like prophets in reverse. they cannot predict the future, not exactly; their knowledge is of the past. but unlike normal prophets, historians can explain their myriad visions. old happenings become not whats and whens but whys, and the historians tell us their tales of the past with an eye toward the future. they cannot exactly say what will happen, but they warn us of what might, looking where nobody else will to keep us as safe as they can.

yes, be kind to historians. because they are kind to us.