Resthome flashback: A reflection on relative depth of historic landmarks.

In the several weeks before I left the resthome, the one (younger) (gay) (Filipino) nurse who tended to do all of the weekly Covid tests got back from a vacation to see his mother, who's also a nurse and who works in Ireland. So, I asked him how the trip was, if he drank Guinness and saw the sights, etc., and he started telling me about some old church that he had seen from the eighth century, and how old that was, "since we don't have history like that at home," and he meant like the Philippines, but not in a nasty way, but like something he just accepted, like that culture had these old historic structures, and they didn't, and that fact didn't matter. His blase-ness about the whole thing was a bit strange to me, since it wasn't like he was buying into that whole "we have history and you don't" mentality, but he wasn't denying it, either. It was more like, "Oh, they have an old church, isn't that nice," but he didn't see the oldness as a sign of profundity, it was more something pleasant for a second like something someone would text you or post on Facebook, and you'd look at it and be like, "Oh, isn't that nice," and then a minute later you'd forget about it, like something washing through an empty head, though you were verbally recognizing everything you were supposed to about it. It really was quite strange.