I’ve always liked history, for one because I find the parallels you can draw between a seemingly dissociative past and a complicated, bureaucratic present to be fascinating.

But also because there is some satisfaction in being able to examine a situation with all the omniscient, retrospective authority I am allotted when reading detailed accounts.

Every history textbook I’ve read since grade school, though, has very thoroughly taught me two lessons: the abolition of slavery, chauvinism and general bigotry and how to establish one’s own country.

In one broad sweep, that’s been history’s bread and butter, what has been turned over and over from generation to generation — reexamined, rewritten, retranslated. It does get a little dry after a while.

It’s possible that my problem is I’ve been reading the wrong textbooks. It’s more likely, though, that I’ve just been reading the same textbook over and over without realizing it. Even as time moves forward and the refuse of current events gets piled ever higher into the heap of discarded past, we get these sweeping glances of enormous spans of time and reduce them to what some consider their “highlights.”

But no, the devil is always in the details. When you look at history, the biggest flaw is that there are so many tiny nuances lost that it blurs the true nature of events for future generations. We could look at the universe in terms of its overall color (called Cosmic latte, if you’re interested), but within that grand reduction is a vivid wealth of colors and light we can’t even see.

Looking at the big picture is rarely all that helpful. True understanding requires full resolution.

There are many moments when I’ll step back and try to gauge what details I think are truly important in the world now and what I think I’m in the thick of that will be written down into history. In high school, I was introduced to the concept of “zeitgeist,” a dainty word that defines the spirit of the age at hand — the general social and political climate, if you will.

But it’s tough to pick and choose what event, what zesty topic of debate trending now will be worth remembering when all the cards have been laid out and the winnings dispersed. This usually only happens in retrospect.

Osama bin Laden, my generation’s arch-villain, our Hitler equivalent, was killed not a week ago. People shouted, sang and flooded the streets in celebration of a victory that was comparatively small but nevertheless significant to the American people.

It took us nearly 10 years – an entire decade – to find him, a mere ghost for so long in the public eye. And then, in a sudden flash of gunfire, it was all over. Even with the unifying chants that erupted in the streets, I couldn’t help but still feel something to be desired.

We were so happy, so elated at the news, but was it truly a historic event? Are we going to talk about this in the coming years, the war still proceeding, with the same unifying sense of pride and accomplishment? Is this the moment our generation will be acknowledged for when our grandchildren sit in their history lessons?

It was important to us, apparently, and I’d like to think that is definition enough for “history-making.” But again, that’s not any one person’s decision.

I suppose the true nature of current events is that no book or primary source will ever match the feeling of having actually been there, seen firsthand the events unfold. There are always more intimate layers to an event than just their bullet points, but in an increasingly complex and dense world it’s hard to fit any more than that next to all of the other equally (in)consequential segments. No amount of theory will ever replace immersion.

All in all, my one hope is that this will be counted as a turning point, a defining moment, when we look back on ourselves in the coming years.