Forgotten Truths

I asked the mage why history was incomplete,

why the textbooks he taught from had gaps,

though he was hundreds of years old

and could have corrected or filled in

the missing information and the errors.

He frowned and shook his head.

I couldn't tell if he was angry or sad.

Humanity can't handle the truth,

was his response. We're too weak, too biased,

too prone to twist even the truth we know.

It was better, he asserted, for some of history

to be lost rather than edited poorly.

Forgetting was salvation.

The future, not the past, was our destination.