It’s amazing to see how time can change people’s perception of things. One day’s hero is another days’ villain. The person once loved and adored becomes the target of hatred and vice versa. There are many examples of that scattered throughout history. People like Napoleon who in his time was called many things including the anti-Christ, is today revered as a military genius. Churchill who was a racist minister and war monger became the beloved leader that took the Second World War by the scruff of its neck and defeated the Nazis. And of course in recent history, who can forget Bin Laden? Depending on from which angle you look from, he is either the worst mankind has to offer or the best. Only time will tell in which category he will fall into.

The problem is not that the person changed over time, it is that our perception of things change while the person cannot as he or she has passed away. Let’s take a simple concept such as torture. What we constitute as torture today would not even be considered a couple of hundred of years ago. So the character of Torquemada, the famous or infamous Spanish inquisitor who was famous for extracting confessions through torture, seen in the light of today’s concept of human rights, would be considered an evil person. Back in his days, while he was feared by Protestants, Muslims and Jews alike, he was a savior when taken in the context of the Catholic doctrine of saving souls. The funny thing about Torquemada was as a Jew who converted to Catholicism he did what nearly all converts do-he became an extremist. Scholars argue that he did it because he believed in the ideology he preached. Other scholars, being cynical, believe that he did it because he was trying to show the leaders of the Church that he was more Catholic than they were. Whichever is right, the idea is that people are subjected to biases of their times and when they take another look at their lives after a significant time has passed, they become more likely to judge them on what they are experiencing now rather than what their subject of interest experienced.

Another problem that time causes is the ability to convince the mind in the concept of romanticism. That means that we are more likely to take the best of what we know while discarding the worst of what we also know to be true. The best example I can give of this is when people are asked at what stage of life they would like to be if they had the choice. Most people would say that they would like to be a baby again. As someone who is currently enjoying the life of being a new father, let me tell you that people who say that forgot what it is like to be helpless, under the whims of others and unable to fend for oneself. Babies have no major stress that we experience but they have their own stress. Waiting for someone to feed you, waiting for someone to change you, hoping that you will get something to play with, being put to sleep when you don’t want to, and crying because you have no other way of expressing yourself is no fun but tell that to the person who romanticizes about being a baby and none of that will materialize in their thoughts. Time has erased all these pains and all they can see, or imagine, is the relief of not having adult responsibilities.

Time, they say, heals pain. I would venture to say that time doesn’t heal pain but dulls the memory of pain. Ask any mother who has given birth if they remember what that pain was like and whether they forgot it? I love it when mothers tell their daughters that they will forget the pain of childbirth. I think not! Then again I am not a woman so I will differ to their expertise on how true this is. We love to remember only the good and fail to see the shortfalls of those whom we love and that what we went through. Our heroes never did any wrong and our villains never did any right. This is what happens when time passes and we end up with a view that we believe to be true. But in that is the problem in the first place.

The questions we must ask ourselves, if we really wanted to be honest, is how good were our heroes and how bad were our villains. Were the Nazis really all bad? How about the Communists? Then again were the Allies all that good? Did they never commit a crime on a small or large scale? Are the Taliban all that bad or have the Western forces been there for a good cause? Were the Christian crusaders defending the holy land or even were the Muslims expanding their empires for their religion as opposed to worldly reasons? Are all the Jews conspiring against the rest of the world or are they a force for good? These are just some questions that would make us uncomfortable to answer if we are blinded by our beliefs. Please don’t misunderstand me. I am not supporting one view versus another. I am simply posing questions to ponder.

If we truly took the time to see what actually happened versus what we would like to believe in, I am sure our perceptions would change. And as they say, perception is reality.