What is time? Loaded question I know...
The title of this blog is "Q'ipa and Nayra" which are words from the Aymara tribe in the Andes. These are the designated words for future and past, respectively. But the peculiar thing about their words for future and past is that they are referring to the opposites. The future means the past and the past means the future.
How does this make sense? It is difficult to articulate. The reason for this is because it forces the speaker, or listener to pay attention to other factors such as the subject, and disregard the tense.
The English-speaking world plans time, and gets upset when time is disrupted. In the Aymara world, they could care less. By not conceptualizing time as "wasted", it makes it less important to plan.
So what does this cultural study mean for historians? It means that we should be cognizant of the words we use to describe occurrences whether past or future. History is not only a past event. Just because something happened does not mean that it is not still happening. Because something is happening, does not mean it cannot happen again. Learning to pay attention to such phrases will help historians grow in their awareness of how time, and subsequently, reality is perceived.
We say in English is "living in the past", perhaps for the Aymara, they are "looking forward to the past."
See you ____ week! (fill in the blank)