Optimistic in the face of history

Travel really trains one’s mind on the vast sweep of history.

From the bones of empire we saw all around Rome, to Kyoto’s elegant, former-capital grace, to the Acropolis in Athens, we are surrounded by stories and glimpses of what little remains of many, many pasts.

We learn the stories of history from guides and guide books and curators. Mostly they are the stories of the leaders and winners but I can also hear, whispering beneath them, innumerable stories of the ordinary, the now nameless, the workers, the artifact makers and 'monument constructors' - the rise and fall of countless little families and their daily work and worries.

Of course, so much of the story is about struggle and war: the rise and fall of autocrats, those on the margins (slaves, women, reformers) battling for inclusion, democracy being in and then falling out.

But instead of defaulting to a humans-are-beasts-and-history-is-a-vast-violent-wasteland perspective, I am feeling very optimistic.

Democracy rises in Athens and thrives during a 60yr golden age and then it begins to fall and the Athenians find themselves piling the golden age statues into hastily constructed walls as the monarch-led Spartans invade.

The Acropolis is topped (consecutively) with the gods of Olympus, a Christian cross, a Muslim minaret and a Nazi flag. Venetian monarchs rise, are checked by a government council which rules for centuries and then is conquered by Napoleon.

The struggle continues.

History is said to bend toward justice but it also seems to circle around it, riff on it, kindle, blaze and crush it, but never forget it.

I am happy to be part, with all of you, of that ordinary day-to-day and timeless struggle.

- david