This is the house my parents started their family, oh...probably more than 50 years ago. Nobody lives there. It hasn't been occupied for more than 20 years. But it still stands. We can all visit and we occasionally do. The rest of our immediate family: my parents, one already left us, and my 2 brothers, also one gone, had and have had history there. They all had lived in this beautiful house. I was not lucky; I was born when they all moved into town. But the weird way of life is that whenever I visit this place, I can feel so connected to it; it is our history, my history.

To know where you come from is an essence of a person in the world, at least that's what I believe. How can you have a sense of who you are without knowing about your root ?

People in a country is the same way; we need to know our collective history, where we all come from as a nation. I know it's social constructed but it serves a great purpose. People without roots have no sense of who they are, how they should interact with others, and they have no compassion. They think only of themselves: me, me, me, now, now, now. At times they become selfish and ugly.

History sounds boring to many; it took me almost half a century to realize the opposite. Your history could make you a better person.