Writing is how I see the world. I look at a picture and I see it in words. I begin to create a story and describe the place through my writing, words flowing through my head like a river. Sometimes this river is a lazy stream, and other times it is a reckless flood of information. These words, the stories I create about the places I’ve been, my experiences, and the places I want to go help me to carve a path through the rocks and to form a canyon that leads me to my future.

For the longest time I had wanted to be a lawyer, and not just any lawyer. I wanted to be the best prosecutor of my time. I was so convinced that being a lawyer was my goal in life that I began to study all that I could about law. I was fascinated by the idea of standing in front of a grand jury in a sharp business suit and condemning a mass murderer to lifetime imprisonment. I wanted to put the bad guys behind bars and, consequently,  clean up the world. I was convinced that by putting criminals away, I would be making the world a more honest place.

The interesting thing is that the more I learned about law, the more I realized that law wasn’t what intrigued me. What attracted me were the people that were involved with law- whether it was the lawyer, the defendant, or the victim. I wanted to know what was going on inside their heads. I also found that I was more interested in the historical aspects of the trial rather than current events. These realizations, however, were only the beginning; a much larger realization was to come about during my tour of Europe.
I was in England, exploring a cathedral when I first dreamed of delving into the human psyche. I remember the sound of footsteps echoing off the marble floor and walls, the silence and the quiet whispers that vibrated down the corridor. These vibrations draw me back to this place, this ancestral beauty.

Hushed voices and quiet murmurs echoed softly down the stone walls. A wooden bench scraped along the gray stone floor, and a boy muttered a quick apology. Patches of sunlight streamed through the stained glass windows, breathing life into the long-standing work of art.

I walked down the hall of this ancient cathedral with its stone arches and pillars, this piece of glorious history, the one to which thousands of people make pilgrimages every year . The main room was crowded with tourists snapping pictures and gawking at the huge marble coffins on display behind the altar. One girl’s eyes bulged when she realized that the marble coffins bore golden names. She yelled to her parents, breaking the hallowed quiet.

The cathedral became louder as more tourists crammed themselves through the ancient oak doors and my sanctuary was invaded. I made a sharp right turn and walked down a stone corridor, the racket dying out behind me. Along the floor of the corridor were rectangular slabs of gray stone. On each of these slabs were designs, family crests. These slabs were not just parts of the floor, but tombs. Careful not to step on them, I examined each . Suddenly, the text I was examining was no longer there. There were no faces, no names that I could incorporate into the subtitles of the images I saw. Who were these people? How did they die? When did they die and what kind of life did they live? I couldn’t help but think of these questions and, as I did, my heart skipped several beats. These decayed bodies and cold bones were once warm and alive. These bodies were once people who had names and who worked and ate and loved. I longed to touch these ghosts and learn about their lives. I wanted to write their stories. These were the tombs of the forgotten, whose many names cried out to me. I must know who these people are; I must know their names and then I must never forget them. These people are humanity’s ancestors, heritage, and blood ties. They are history and they are the key to the future. History is alive, the pulsing blood within the human body, and like the human, history does not wish to be forgotten.

Slowly, I drew out of my memory. Words formed streams of sentences in my mind’s eye. I was in a daze. The tombs formed the basis of a story in my mind and this story was new for me . It carried a deeper meaning than I could have imaged. This story carved a new path in my canyon. It was a new route that changed the direction my life will take, just as water changes course to follow openings between the rocks.

This realization about living history came as a shock for me. Never before had I felt such a longing to understand the human mind and the history behind ancient structures and people. I found that I wanted to learn all I could about history and the psychology behind it and then share it with the rest of the world. I wanted to teach the world how to respect and remember how earth once was, and what it could become using the lessons from its history.

I didn’t discard all my lessons about law; instead I placed them into storage, just as one would save half-written stories or ideas. In a way, it’s like how the canyon’s original waterway was not destroyed, but how it will remain barren with no new water entering it. However, if the water’s new path was ever diverted, the original course would also be there to once again take up the roar of the water coasting down the rocky walls.

This reverie helped me to understand myself and the person I wanted to become. I love history and am fascinated by the human mind. Yet, in order to continue my never-ending story, I must know how today’s world works, and I realize that the legal information I acquired when I was younger is still pertinent to the person I want to be. Therefore, maybe it’s not that the canyon’s original course is barren, but that it is in a symbiotic relationship with the new waterway. Both are needed to create the identity that defines the person I am.

by Brittany Krueger ‘13