july fourth...

so today is july 4th, and america celebrates it's 230th year of being an independent nation. we are such a young country, which got me to thinking about things the other day.
take a look at europe. or better yet...take a look at the rest of the world. thousands of years of being established. it's there that you'll find the history. it's there you'll find the castles and the walls, the kings and queens, the past and the present and soon to be future existing all at once.
where is all of our history? in a thousand years, what will be our castles?
i drive to the town where i grew up a couple of times a month to visit my mom. on the way there, driving on this two lane "highway" i pass this field where people have parked their trailer homes and are now living. beside this field is an unkept dirt/weed road where, unless you were really looking for it, you wouldn't even notice it. and at the corner of the highway and this road there is a historical marker. you know...one of those brown signs the government is forced to put up to show that something of some importance happened there. that's all. i've never once stopped to look at it. to understand it's importance, to gain the knowledge of the history of that specific place. all it is to me is a field with people living in trailers.
as a nation we don't preserve our history. rob and i went to san antonio last summer. rob, being from indiana, had never seen the alamo, and thought it was funny that here in texas they don't teach us as students that we actually lost the battle of the alamo, but that we are forced to learn everything else about it. i had been there once as a small child, but did not really remember much other than all the walking i was forced to endure. so as we embarked on our journey, i was kind of excited to get to see this place in history with a mind that could soak up and create a lasting memory of the experience. when we finally got there, my excitement was crushed by the reality of the unimportance our history seems to hold in today's society. there it was, the alamo, this place were many people died, where men fought for our right to live here...and across the street rob and i were eating at a pizza hut and looking at it through the window.
i don't know why this strikes me in such a way that it does, but i can't help but think that without history, we're nothing. we cannot build a future if we have no past on which to build a foundation.