This chapter discusses the ways that history, as a discipline, is deeply grounded in reflections on temporal experience. Influence and agency, or cause and effect, only scratch the surface of the multiple ways we tell stories about the past. As we reflect upon the past from multiple perspectives, we see that history is far more than a simple story – it is a vast house with many windows. This chapter examines how historical events can be seen as ruptures from the past, or conversely, as repetitions of the past, and how a researcher can separate signal from noise, and discern the truly meaningful historical events. The chapter explores historians’ tools for navigating temporal experience, drawing on recent theoretical work by Stephen Tanaka, Astrid Erll, and Reinhart Koselleck. It suggests that data-driven examinations of history are most effective when modeled to match a perspectival, theory-driven representation of only one of the multiple dimensions of history, and so offers the intellectual foundation for the chapters that follow.