Remembering

I started thinking about this while cleaning my room, and it started making scary sense....


I am born from time to time.
I suppose the popular term is "reincarnation", but really what I am is a rememberer. Everyone is reborn time and again when history needs them (it is why history tends to repeat itself), but only some are rememberers.
There are varying degrees of remembering. Some recall vague feelings from their past lives--shreds of knowledge and ideas of familiarity that don't seem to come from any experience in the present. They're generally quiet and tend to keep to themselves, mulling over thoughts leftover from who they were before. They're often classified as "odd" or "introverted", and many are described as "old before their time".
There are some who remember more. They can recall images and sounds from lives of the past--usually jumbled and unclear--and they're driven by a sense of purpose that seems ingrained in them from before their birth. Many see the earth and remember the past, and are saddened or angered by how time has changed it all. Some act on that anger and sadness and try to force the world back to the way it was. You likely know many of them--Napoleon and Hitler, among others.
A very rare few, though, decide to build on the past rather than recreate it. You probably know them as well--Aristotle, Galileo, and Einstein were all the same person, building on his accumulated knowledge and revolutionizing science as he went. These rare few are the ones who change the world in hopes of a better future, and who are driven by a longstanding inner drive to see the world improve.
...And then there are those like me.
I am one of a scant handful on this earth. I remember everything. I have gone mad from it before (I was Jack the Ripper for a time), but over time, I've come to accept my memories of the past. I have become one of the guardians of the earth, my lives dedicated to finding new paths in history and steering mankind towards them. We make mistakes. We always make mistakes, but we remember them and do not make the same ones twice. I wonder if, one day, I will be allowed to rest; to live a life with no memory of the last. I have not been truly surprised by anything for a long, long time, and I cling to a hope that I will, one day. In the meantime, I will die and be born again, ready to continue on my journey and see where mankind goes next.