Leveraging History’s Perspective

If we can keep the broader perspective that history can teach us, we can feel assured that tomorrow will come and good things are bound to happen in the days in the future. We will all face hard days but just like the people who lived before us came together to face those challenges, we will get through our tough times too.

It can help sometimes to learn about or visit places with much longer histories than the United States. It’s been my experience that they can teach us how to view our current challenges in a broader context.

I had the great opportunity of studying in England for a summer with a program affiliated with my Masters degree. It was amazing to walk among buildings nearly a thousand years old and know a bit about the history those buildings have seen: wars, occupations, plagues, and political dynasties come and gone.

This immense historic timeline in the U.K. hit home particularly poignantly when I visited Bath, which was a Roman resort town long before what we think of as England in a modern sense existed. I had the chance to take a tour of the bath house from which Bath gets its name and I had the uncanny feeling that the space was almost timeless. It had been restored and maintained so well that they were actually used as public baths up until the 1970’s. That means the facilities had served the same purpose for about 2,000 years and served countless generations and lived through multiple government shifts. When I think of places like that, somehow our current political crises feel less like end of the world scenarios and more challenging times we’ll get through.

I try to put myself in the shoes of those people who walked the cobblestone streets hundreds of years ago and try to think of the fears and hopes they felt. It makes me realize that our human desires haven’t changed too much. We still seek for growth, learning, happiness, and what is best for our families.

When we look at the monumental events that take place around the world throughout history, it doesn’t necessarily minimize the importance we place on our daily fears and insecurities, and difficulties. But we can take comfort in knowing that even with the most challenging of times, people still make things work and they kept moving forward.

If we can keep that slice of hope in our minds and this kind of greater perspective, we can feel assured that tomorrow will come and good things are bound to happen in the days in the future. We will all face hard days but just like the people who lived before us came together to face those challenges, we will get through our tough times too.