Finding something to relate to with people is often one of the hardest parts of interpersonal connections in my opinion. It’s not that you don’t want to find things to connect about or relate to, it’s just that sometimes those things are buried a lot deeper than you can see from limited interactions. This difficulty is expanded even more so when you are trying to relate to someone that you not only do not know, haven’t spoken to or seen, but someone that isn’t even with us anymore. Another layer is added onto that when you likely don’t share many of the same experiences or ideals with that person. In regards to a person such as Mikiso Hane, I’m not going to claim to relate to his experiences or beliefs or anything of that sort because I just don’t know enough about them nor do I imagine there are many similarities to reflect on. However, I do believe that I can relate to him with the fact that we are both people. We both were born on the planet Earth and have experienced things that impacted our lives and changed the outcome of where we ended up, and sure, we both ended up at Knox College at some point, which in and of itself may be a relation, however it must be said that the environment that he experienced Knox in and the way that I am experiencing it are likely drastically different. On the other hand, playing the role of an archivist with the collection of someone like this could play a huge role in how my opinion of this changes over time. I may find things that I never thought I could have related to when it comes to Hane, and so might other people, which is something important to consider when examining this collection. Hane was placed in very high regard from all different kinds of people, and so was his collection, so there must be something in this man for everyone to admire and even relate to. So, I’m hoping that as we begin processing this collection, these qualities will become evermore prominent to all of us that are involved.
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It can be really difficult to find the “person” behind the documents! I often find that I sometimes have to read someone’s papers for months before I get a sense of who they were–and even then, there are people that I’ve written about that I only understand one aspect of. Either their business persona, how they’re reported about in a newspaper, or specific relationships they have that intersect with my research. One of the challenges of a historian is to keep trying to connect with the “person” behind our subjects, even if we can only do it imperfectly.