That was then, and it still is now.

There is no such thing as the past, it's just the starting point of what we are living now.

There is currently some furor in the U.S. over The New York Times Magazine publishing an article tracing how slavery, starting in 1619 with the arrival of the first shipload of African slaves, powered the development of the nation. There is nothing in the United States that hasn't been touched by the stain of slavery.

Wandering through Ireland you feel much the same thing. The colonial oppression Ireland suffered from is foundational to everything about the nation now.  England "planting" settlers (many of whom were banished from the Scottish Highlands) led directly to The Troubles in Northern Ireland. Ironically, 1619 is the year the first walls were completed in in Londonderry to exclude native Irish (Catholics) from the newly arrived English (Protestants).

England colonizing Ireland and using Irish lands to pay off supporters of whomever the current king/ruler of England was led to the potato famine, aka "The Great Hunger." All of this and more led to the violence that created the modern state of Ireland.

But that's all in the past, isn't it? With The Good Friday Agreement, there is peace and prosperity, right? Yes, but it's all so very fragile. With Brexit, the Good Friday Agreement--and remember, that agreement is only 21 years old, barely in the "past" at all--is in danger. Why? Because the United Kingdom got hoodwinked into believing an imbecilic band of grifters who promised free stuff and no taxes by leaving the European Union, also known as Brexit. This has now culminated in Boris Johnson achieving the Prime Ministership of the United Kingdom. Here in the United States, people of a certain political persuasion are cheering Brexit, having proved themselves just as stupid as those UK voters by electing Donald Trump. Meanwhile bombs are starting to go off again.

But what haunts me most about our time in Ireland is our continuing fragility in the face of things we cannot control. The Irish lived off potatoes because that's all they could grow (and survive) on the land they were allowed to keep. The blight that attacked the potatoes caused the starvation because the Irish lived on that thin edge of one crop. When we as modern humans think about that, we might think about the tragedy of so many people dying, but that seems so distant, so far in the past. Meanwhile, people are dying attempting to escape oppression, famine, disease, and war by boarding tiny boats to cross the Mediterranean, or accumulating in refugee camps throughout the world, or attempting to seek asylum in the United States. We are allowing these things to happen rather than recognizing the profound effects of climate change.

Our little family could easily be considered climate refugees, moving away from the heat and the economic problems of Southern California to the Pacific Northwest. We sought an area we could afford, that was comfortable, and had a more assured water supply. What, other than the scale and severity of crisis, and the fact that we moved within the borders of our own country, separates us from Strokestown's Missing 1,490? Why was Thomas Gallagher welcomed to the United States, but Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez and his 23-month-old daughter, Angie Valeria weren't? What will happen here in the United States when, for example, Phoenix and Las Vegas become uninhabitable? Because the past isn't really the past, we know what will happen: cities and states will bar the migrants and shunt them into camps. We see it happening with the homeless already.

We live partly in the past because the past is the foundation of today. But we have to also live to build the future. We have the responsibility of leaving the world better than we found it. We are failing, but we don't have to continue to fail. And the first step in the process is learning what's broken, and what it will take to fix it.