A Montezuma-Cortez High School student, discussing her fears about school violence, pointed out this week that many of the events we commemorate are not positive ones.

She mentioned the anniversary of the Columbine school shooting in Littleton two years ago, Hitler’s birthday, the Oklahoma City bombing and Pearl Harbor Day.

"Is it true," she asked, "that if we don’t remember history we’re condemned to repeat it? Wouldn’t it be more accurate to say that if we don’t understand its causes, we’re condemned to suffer tragedies until we figure them out?"

That’s a valid point.

Adults have a different perspective than students, of course. We understand the distinction between celebrating an event and commemorating it. All too often, we set aside holidays to honor the men and women who were propelled into heroic action because of horrible circumstances; we do not memorialize those whose terrible crimes made such heroism necessary. We memorialize the victims.

We do try to remember the good, but there’s a subculture that sees, and celebrates, the negative aspects of every evening, pointing out that we are repeating history and we’re not really learning very much from it.

In some ways that’s true. Stories from the past, however powerful they might be, lose their potency through the generations as historical events recede into the increasingly dim past. It won’t be too many more years before there is no one left alive who remembers Hitler. World War II will not shape our children’s lives the way Oklahoma City and Columbine will. The names of the memorials will change; will anything else have changed?

We can choose to be cautious without being fearful. We can choose to develop tools with which to rationally assess the risks we face each day, without allowing those risks to rule us.

Above all, we can choose power over powerlessness. We can take from these events — including the recent threats at MCHS — a sense of the necessity to control our own circumstances rather than allowing ourselves to be victimized by threats.

By now, the cycles of history should be obvious to all of us. In terms of human nature, there’s nothing new under the sun. Bullies use whatever means are available to them, from dragging weaker occupants from their caves, to burning the fields that supply food to villages, to using swords and guns and nuclear weapons. The means may change; the motivation will not.

As George Santayana wrote nearly a century ago, those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. We should have learned that lesson by now. The other lesson we should have learned, and perhaps have not, is that to break out of the vicious cycle, heroic actions are required. That means standing up to bullies. It means not allowing them to drive our children out of their schools. It means not changing our lives to accommodate them.