Before us, what was it like? Were the trees still there? Was the air just as crisp as it is every November? If we look back at our parents’ lives, and our grandparents’ lives, was this building here? Was the sidewalk you mindlessly walk on just a dirt road? Some people say that history never repeats itself; it just rhymes, but which is it? Is the reason we continue to teach history class to prevent the repetition of the horrifying events in the past?

While on the tour of Adamson Square, I had the chance to talk with an older man who gave us a small history lesson about when the square was considered “dead.” When he first arrived in Carrollton in 1982, the square was nearly deserted. There were no businesses, hardly any people, and none of the life we associate with it today. As the man talked, it was hard to imagine the square as such a barren place. Today, Adamson Square is lively and peaceful, a place where people walk around, visit stores, and spend time together. Yet this same place once looked nothing like the place we know and love

He explained how the square slowly began to come back to life after a family opened a business. This new business began to attract other store owners, and gradually the Square came alive again. One family’s decision helped create something that would eventually become part of the community’s identity. Listening to him made me realize how little we actually know about the places we see pass by on the daily. We walk across the same sidewalks and pass the same buildings without questioning how they came to be. Because the square has always looked a certain way to us, we begin to treat its current appearance as though it has always existed. But it hasn’t.

“None of this was here, these buildings? Didn’t exist. It was all completely different.” – The man.

This quote shows how we can’t just assume that what we grew up with is what has always been, or always will be. As we grow up we see this, the new trends, the new phrases, or clothing brands.

I remember walking around campus during the scavenger hunt. We walked around the campus a bit, searching for things that connected to our assignment whilst filling out a bingo card as we made observations. It was about making visual observations and connecting them to the prompts. A school can become so familiar that you stop really seeing it. You know where to walk, which buildings you pass, and what your surroundings look like, but you rarely stop to wonder what was there before you walked in. The scavenger hunt made the campus feel less like a place I simply attended, and more like a place full of details, stories, and history I might not know.

Both experiences made me question why we treat the present as if it is permanent. Adamson Square was once almost empty, and now it has become a gathering place. My school campus, too, has a history that existed before I walked through it. The buildings and paths that seem ordinary to me may have replaced something else, just as the places I know today might eventually be changed or replaced. I can observe what is here now, but I cannot personally experience what came before me. I have to rely on stories, evidence, and imagination to begin understanding it.

“Time is an illusion.” -Albert EinStein.

By saying time is an illusion, you’re saying that what you see isn’t what everyone sees, your perspective on something may not be another person’s.