Welcome everyone to the Armistice Day Ball. I wish I could be greeting you in happier times, but I take heart in how many of you I see here tonight.
It wasn't that long ago that both Alliance and Horde set foot for the first time upon a distant shore far from home. They befriended the natives of this land, making newallies. At first, it seemed as if Alliance and Horde were doomed to continue to be enemies, but then a greater threat emerged. Brave individuals put aside their differences and decided to work together to protect Azeroth from destruction.
I am, of course, talking about Kalimdor and the fight against the incursion of the Burning Legion. We've gathered every year to commemorate how once, not so many years ago, we learned it was possible to work together.
Why do we do this every year? Because unless we remember and apply the lessons learned in the past, we're doomed to repeat our mistakes.
If you'll indulge me a moment, I'd like to share a little story with you. There once was a young gnomish girl- we'll leave names out of this for the moment- who wanted to bake a cake and didn't know how. It was something she'd never tried before. So she experimented in her parents' kitchen, but nothing she did came out quite cake-like, and the kitchen turned into a huge mess.
'Our kitchen!' her father cried. 'Why are you blowing things up here, instead of looking at your grandmother's recipe book?"
So the gnome went to the bookshelf and found her grandmother's old recipe book. She looked up how to make a cake and read the instructions.
'Oh, no, this doesn't apply to me,' the gnome thought. 'This recipe is very precise. We don't use these specific types of pans any more, and our ovens are different and bake faster. Not to mention we have new machines that mix things, so those instructions are useless. I can't use this.'
As she was putting the book back on the shelf, her father came in and asked why she was returning it.
'I can't use that recipe,' the girl replied. 'Too many things have changed since that book was written, and all the details don't apply to my situation.'
'Use your common sense, daughter. Of course you can't follow the steps exactly, but you're still making a cake! You grandmother wrote that book so you won't make as many mistakes as she did. Use it as a guideline rather than blindly experimenting. Maybe you'll stop making such a big mess!'
So the gnome consulted the recipe book and tried again. She had to take into account modern cooking gizmos, but at last she baked a cake. It wasn't the best cake, but it only took a few more tries before she was making perfect ones. She would have never learned so quickly if she had not used the recipe book.
Now what is the point of this story? Too often we look at the lessons of the past and focus too much on the details and the differences rather than the overall lesson. We think, 'This doesn't apply to me because this has changed' or 'because this detail is no longer true.'
Or maybe, 'Because that time the threat came from the Burning Legion, they had no choice' or 'Because this time, we're dealing with someone I personally hate.'
History is best remembered as guideline. We are never going to have the exact same set of circumstances happen twice, but we can still look at the battle of Mt. Hyjal, the history of the orcs and humans, or that of the Pandaren and Mogu, and see how the general principles learned can be used to guide us in our decisions today. And maybe next time we'll avoid destroying the kitchen in the process.
Now, I feel as if I've been talking for a quite a while, so I bid each of you to spend the rest of the evening socializing and having fun, and of course, enjoying the cake!
