My grandpa is a good man.

He has loved his family, served his country, and been a good friend to his friends. Some of the best gifts he gave to me were his time and his stories. I don’t really remember a time when he wasn’t there. I call him Pops because as a baby, after hours of him and my mom saying “papa,” I finally spit out “pop-pop.” As the oldest grandchild, the name ended up sticking.

Pops was there when I was a kid, letting us cousins ride in the back of his truck without our seatbelts, going skiing with us, traveling to Alaska and Hawaii, and then Italy with us, at my graduations, and every play I have ever been in. He has been deeply involved in my life, filling it with stories that bear names such as “The Juggler Who Got the Gold,” and “LuLu’s Five Star Restaurant,” stories of my family’s immigration from Sweden to Kingsburg, California, stories of the Central Valley where I have grown up, stories of America in the course of a half century of wars. The invaluable gift he has given me is my history.

In a world where all the knowledge in the world is said to double every two years, it is easy to lose sight of the value of history. Everything is new. Everything is improved. Everything is better and shinier. I love technological and informational advancement more than most. I’m a big fan of it. However, if we attempt to advance while neglecting to carry our history, particularly the history of our family, our hometowns, and our country, we risk finding our advancements hollow. History can be measured neither in dollars nor usefulness. What it can be measured in is the way in which it helps us live well. Not all of history is pleasant or wonderful—and from such unpleasant examples we learn to behave better. That which is wonderful calls us to a higher standard of account, providing a benchmark for us to strive after.

To me, retirement homes are some of the saddest places. I understand that end-of-life care is expensive, that families often live far apart, and that a million other particulars contribute to the reality of retirement living. But when I have made the point of visiting and chatting with residents who are the most lonely, I see a class of people we are systematically ignoring. The ones who go months, or perhaps years, before seeing a family member. Without knowing their history, that fact is heartbreaking. Why do we ignore our history? Is it because we hope to ignore that our elders were once as young and vital as we are ourselves, and that consequently we too may see our bodies begin to age as theirs have? That we are so repulsed by our own mortality, we ignore the members of society who face their mortality in the mirror?

This desire to be entirely autonomous, to be without ties, is incredibly damaging to society. To live in a world where we have no ties of family, to say nothing of location—where those are things to be ignored, or addressed only at our convenience—neglects the fact that to be human is to be communal. No one, except the exceptional cases of hermits, really works well being in isolation. The first step towards creating community means creating ties; we create those ties through the stories of the people and places we encounter.

Nowhere is this driven home more personally than in the story of how Pops met Mor-Mor (Swedish for "grandma"). Pops signed up with the Air Force the day before his draft number was called by the Army (he would have headed out to Korea). Because he was a pilot in California, Pops flight training ended up taking him to Hawaii, where Mor-Mor was visiting friends, who also knew Pops. They were introduced, and shortly after, they married. Had my grandpa instead gone to Korea, any number of things may have happened in his life, but I would not have been one of them. His story is my story.

All of us have a story, all of us have a history. When we neglect those stories, and as a result attempt to remove ourselves from the fluid continuity and act as if we are a discontinuous part, we disrespect the people and places who have contributed to our autonomy. In a personal way, we miss the opportunity to learn to love those who are around us. Charity starts with the people whom we encounter in our sphere of activity: family, friends, and those in our local communities. One of the easiest ways to be charitable is to listen, and by doing so incorporate those who might be isolated back into the community.

Pops has been in the hospital this week. I’m planning to go read to him tomorrow afternoon; but we will probably argue politics, as he is a life-long FDR Democrat, and I am, well, not exactly that. We will talk about trips we've made and adventures he has had. His wife Marian, Mor-Mor having died many years ago, will be there—the best non-biological grandparent I could ask for. I will ask them about their high school days in the 1940s, and what the world was like when they were my age. I hear the stories over and over again, and they never bore me, because hospitals provide the mind with a certain urgency to remember each word.

But we should all experience this urgency. We never know what might happen next; as Aristotle remarked (to paraphrase), “it is impossible to make a true statement about future contingent things.” We can’t join our communities tomorrow, we cannot strengthen those deeply human ties tomorrow. We can, and must, root ourselves into the course of human life today. I recommend starting by giving your grandparents a call, or dropping by the old folks home, and ask them about their first job, or first date, or their history. It might not all be perfect, or neat and tidy, but it will be human. And isn’t that the point?