Mysteries of the Past

Last Sunday, I managed to go to the cinema watching Kung Fu Panda, a 2008 animated film about a panda named Po aspiring to become a kung fu warrior, despite his clumsiness, a fat guy working for his father running a noodle restaurant. As he worked to his destiny, he was chosen to be the Dragon Warrior to fight the evil snow leopard warrior Tai Lung. Dealing with "mission impossible" preparing from nothing to kung fu warrior to save the Valley of Peace, Master Shifu (or Grand Master Oogway ?) started training Po with an advice, yesterday is history, tomorrow is mystery, and today is a gift. That's why it's called a present.

It reminds me how precious is the present that we shall value every minutes of moment to be of something useful to prepare for the future, yet enjoyable and fun. A shed of light for a mystery tomorrow. How about a history yesterday ? Interesting to be aware of, yesterday's history remains to have a lot of msyteries -- the ones that, unfortunately, have been shaping our today and perhaps tomorrow.

I was reading the Alexandria Link, a fantastic fiction epic by Steve Berry, a New York Times best seller. As Da Vinci Code is with a wild imagination sourced out of New Testament, the Link is for Old Testament. The Covenant of Abraham in Genesis is talking about a promised land God gave to Israel thru Abraham. The piece of land Israel is now occupying, an area of Palestine in the previous past (well, depending on how long we go back in history), a source of conflict in Middle East since 1948. The story argues about "lost in translation" from original source in Old Hebrew to Latin to English. Reversing it back to Old Hebrew, studying the contextual meaning, and mapping out the current region in question, the promised land points to the current West Arabia, not Palestine! It's becoming a shocking "fact" that would impact the course of history with a great deal of interests at stake. The source can be traced back to the legendary Library of Alexandria, buried into thousands of old manuscripts. This most information cache of ancient knowlledge vanished without trace 1500 years ago...

As with epic novel like this, a mixed of research study ("facts") and fiction construct the whole story landscape. Steve Berry sourced the first part from a study conducted by a Lebanese scholar Dr. Kamal Salibi in a book The Bible Came from Arabia. I had been reading books sourced for Da Vinci Code and other stuffs related to history and old scrolls, biblical manuscripts, and civilization. It's quite overwhelming. Things strucking me are that: how well we know about ourselves, about human kind, our origin ? How little we understand about history as accepted facts with so much ancient writings buried into nowhere, or kept in custody that open up prospects for a completely new meaning, the stuffs that would de-construct our current civilization history as we understand today ?

As individual, we all, I presume, have a bit of dark side of the past that we would try to forgive and forget. And make peace with it to free up our soul and mind for the better journey of the future. But for things dealing with humankind, stuffs that provide foundation of some beliefs, historcial revealation that could change the future....and probably events that could trigger a new source of conflicts.... it's realy a serious matter, and sensitive to some extents. And I could not just comprehend it all yet.

Master Shifu and Grand Master Oogway, yesterday remains a big mystery, no less than the future. Until we have the technology and wisdom, it will remain so before we could have a real history of yesterday. Let the mystery be for the future only. A long quest for the real truth of humankind.