featured photo by Photo by Gabriel Jimenez
This Editorial precedes Volume 24, Issue 6 of Kosmos. Scroll down to access featured content.
Dear Kosmos Reader,
The past isn’t what it used to be. As a child, I accepted the history taught in hardcover textbooks—stories of progress and heroism, Manifest Destiny and great achievement. Only when I began reading autobiographies from the margins of history did I realize how partial my understanding of the past really was—or ever could be.
And yet, many of us cling to an idealized image of ‘the way things used to be’. This, despite the fact we barely seem to remember, let alone agree on, factual events that happened a decade ago, a year ago, or even last month. Our collective memory is filtered through a fine mesh of trauma, media fog, misinformation, and fear. We do not agree on what has happened, and this disagreement fuels our suffering.
Still, I’m not advocating that we throw any of it away—because there is no “away.” The past is alive in us. Instead, we can learn to use all of it—because even our mistakes, our “garbage” and distrust can serve a purpose and contribute to new life. But how?
When we compost, we take what appears to be waste—rotting leaves, broken stems, empty husks—and give it the conditions it needs to transform. It looks like a big mess. But with time and space, the chaos resolves into order, and the waste transforms into something useful. Nature shows us that decay is both an ending and a beginning.
Transforming the past requires humility. It asks us to look deeply into our pain and our misunderstanding. It asks us to touch the truth of impermanence—that nothing stays the same and everything is connected—and to recognize our place in the broader web of life. We don’t have to do it alone. In fact, composting is a process of communion.
In community, we have the capacity to compost the past and transform our collective refuse into a fresh start. Each of the articles in this issue offers a way to begin anew.
With love and trust,
r.fabian, for Kosmos