Ecclesiastes 1:8-11 – All things are full of labor; Man cannot express it. The eye is not satisfied with seeing, Nor the ear filled with hearing. That which has been is what will be, That which is done is what will be done, And there is nothing new under the sun.

(10) Is there anything of which it may be said, “See, this is new”?

It has already been in ancient times before us. There is no remembrance of former things, Nor will there be any remembrance of things that are to come By those who will come after.

This suggests that history, human endeavors, and even the pursuit of novelty are repetitive and lack true originality. Truly, there is nothing new under the sun. It’s all been tried and either failed or succeeded.

I believe that studying and understanding history is a valuable resource for knowledge, correction, and lessons learned to not be repeated. Yet we still do it.

I’ll give you a youthful example from what I learned. When I was about four or so, my mom would always send me out to play. The road in front of our house was a dirt road with ditches on both sides.

We’d had a considerable amount of rain, and the ditches were full of water. I had this wooden rocking horse. It closely resembles the picture in this post. I figured I should be able to put my trusty steed in the water and test it. To my surprise, it floated. Can you see the question mark over my head? Yep. I was going to mount and ride my steed in the water upon which it floated. So, I mounted it. It immediately sank to the bottom. I was soaked. My mom happened to see the failure and took me inside, changed my clothes, and told me not to do it again.

Well, you know, little kids. It was time to rethink the strategery. (Old Bush idiom). Perhaps I had mounted my steed incorrectly. So, seeing it was now floating again, I decided to give it another try. Failure succeeded again. There I said to my chest in water. My mom was not happy, but she didn’t spank me… yet. She had fully reclothed me the second time, but the second change she only put on a T-shirt and drawers.

Okay. The third time is a charm. That only got me a spanking and forbidding me to go close to the ditch. My steed was retrieved and set aside to dry, while I dried my eyes.

Lesson learned? Yes. History does play an important part of learning. Wooden horses don’t float. Neither do poor decisions, because we fail to learn from the past.