The Breath of History

I have wise friends. One of them told me today that 'History is only the subjective recollection of the storyteller's memory'.

I was greatly impressed, because it makes so perfect sense. Just think of the average accident and the many many versions of such a simple, horrid, factual event. What happened? And who made it happen? And everyone disagrees. So there are also perspectives on wars and crime and simply, just the every day relationships that we have.

In the last analysis, one cannot help but wonder about the legitimacy of opinions - even your own take on a specific moment - and how TRUE these actually are.

Which bring me to the question: What is truth?

Well, all of this was triggered when someone wrote a case study on the community development work we have done together with another agency, and called it BRILLIANT and INNOVATIVE. A compliment, one should think, but then you have to realise that we have already done an internal review and decided that the programme has WAY too many gaps and problems to be replicated or even continued. Just not good enough. And here it is heralded by another as THE solution to many poor people's lives. And we wonder...

What will remain as the historical version? Our internal review in the private archives or the public speaker's notes - now published in a global magazine?

Makes one think about those experiences in Iraq... and elsewhere, where 'history' is in the making.