Today, for Thankful Thursday, I am overflowing with gratitude. Gratitude for awareness. Grateful for the understanding that I don’t know everything. Grateful for the realization that history, as we were taught in school, is not a collection of closed chapters, but an ongoing story—one shaped by propaganda, power, and perspective. I am grateful to be awake enough to see the patterns, to understand the cycles, and to question everything. Because in that questioning, there is growth. And in growth, there is freedom.

Personally Awakening to Awareness

My journey to this awareness began with a deeply personal quest. Just a few years ago, I wanted nothing to do with the idea of being “woke.” When the term first started gaining traction, I actively rejected it. I remember saying, “To be woke is to be forced to contend with the thing, and I don’t want to do the work.” I was content in my blissful ignorance. My stance was simple: Get somebody else to do it.

But life, in its infinite wisdom, has a way of nudging us awake. If you live long enough and pay enough attention, awareness finds you whether you want it to or not. I never set out to be consciously aware—I didn’t chase knowledge or enlightenment. Instead, it crept up on me through a series of personal struggles and hard truths. It started when I found myself stuck in patterns I couldn’t explain—choosing the wrong relationships, feeling unfulfilled in my career, and making decisions that didn’t align with who I wanted to be.

I began questioning my behaviors, my choices in partners, my career decisions, and even my friendships. I wanted to understand why I responded to life the way I did. Who was I, really? How had I become this version of myself? And was there a more authentic version of me buried under layers of conditioning, trauma, and societal expectations?

The Interconnectedness Unveiled

That was the moment everything cracked open. It felt like the ground beneath me had shifted, like I had been walking through life with blurry vision and was suddenly forced to see with unsettling clarity. There was grief in that awareness—grief for the years I had spent unknowingly operating under beliefs and habits that weren’t truly my own. But there was also power. Because once you see, you can’t unsee. And once you know better, you have the choice to do better.

Self-reflection led me to investigate my parents, my upbringing, and my environment. The deeper I dug, the more I realized how little I truly knew. At one point, when I was working a job I hated, surrounded by people who seemed content with the status quo, I asked myself, Is this really all there is? That one question sent me down a rabbit hole of reexamining everything—from my values to my aspirations to the systems that shaped my reality.

The more I questioned myself—my patterns, my upbringing, my choices—the more I saw how history was still alive, influencing my world in ways I had never realized.

And here’s the crucial shift:

This journey of self-discovery wasn’t just about me. It became a lens through which I could see the interconnectedness of everything. As I peeled back the layers of my own conditioning, I saw how deeply embedded propaganda, power, and perspective were in shaping not just my life, but the world around me. My personal patterns mirrored the larger societal patterns.

Years later, I have a strong sense of self. I know what I stand for, and I make intentional, informed choices about the direction of my life. Yet, even with all this awareness, I still recognize that I don’t really know anything. Because everything in life is nuanced. Everything is interconnected. And the more you learn, the more you understand just how much remains unknown.

What about you? Has life ever forced you to wake up in a way you weren’t prepared for?

The Illusion of History and the Cycle of Struggle

Lately, I’ve been reflecting on how history doesn’t really feel like history. When I was younger, I believed history was something in the past—finished, resolved, and neatly tucked away in the pages of textbooks. The black-and-white photos, the dated history books, and the way events were spoken about in school all reinforced the idea that history was something that had happened and was over.

Even when learning about struggles that weren’t far removed from the time I was living in, the framing made it seem as though those battles had been fought, won, and closed. Take the fight for civil rights, for example. The same battles fought in the ’60s—for voting rights, fair wages, and police accountability—are still being fought today, just under different names and policies. It’s not something in the past, but rather a continuum of chaos—a cycle that keeps repeating itself.

A friend recently sent me a YouTube video about the overdue collapse of the 9-5 work culture, and it resonated with me deeply. In the video, the speaker highlighted how the protests of the ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s were fueled by Americans fighting for the same things we still want today. Meanwhile, corporations continue playing the same games, manipulating workers and keeping progress just out of reach.

He made an interesting point: the reason we struggle to take meaningful steps forward is that we’re divided on what we want. We see this division everywhere—from political debates where people argue over terminology rather than solutions, to labor movements where some workers fight for better wages while others fear losing job security. Even in conversations about healthcare, education, and social justice, many people fundamentally desire the same things—access, fairness, and stability—but the language we use and the ideologies we align with keep us from uniting toward a common goal.

He shared how, depending on the room he’s in, his views on the working class could label him as socialist, communist, democratic, or even republican. The irony is that, at the core, we all want the same things—fair wages, work-life balance, dignity—but we’re tricked into believing we’re on opposing sides.

It’s the lack of awareness that we are all fighting for the same things under different names that creates the division that keeps us from coming together and advocating for real change. And in that, I absolutely agree with him.

My Final Thoughts

The realization—that our personal journeys of awakening are connected to history and societal change—is both humbling and empowering. It urges us to move beyond a simplified view of the past and to see the ongoing fight for a fairer world. Let us work to overcome the divisions that keep us apart, question the narratives that shape our views, and take part in creating a future where true progress is achievable. I invite you, dear reader, to think about your own journey: Where have you seen the influence of history in your life? What patterns have you noticed, and how will you use that knowledge to make a difference? Let us awaken together, for in our shared awareness lies the power to change the story.