I confess to being a bit of an antiquarian. Mostly I read secondary sources; I've done a little research with contemporaneous primary documents―mostly letters and notes of various U.S. politicians and government officials―but what really interests me is trying to put my metaphorical self in the proverbial shoes of people who lived during "historic" times, and imagine what it felt like to them in the absence of our retrospective knowledge of the significance of what they were living through.
One of the books that captured that sense best for me is
The Children of Pride (1972), a series of letters written to each other by members of an extended family, based in the state of Georgia, during the 19th Century U.S. civil war. The fact that these were slave owners is no doubt off-putting to some, but though I was fascinated by their apparently sincere justifications of the "peculiar institution," what interested me even more was their simultaneous ignorance and acute perception of how their world was so fundamentally changing. The collection reads like an epistolary novel. There is real suspense. The family members didn't know what would happen next, so the reader who suspends his knowledge of the outcome can vicariously live though those times with them.
"History" inevitably is what subsequent generations say it is. But given that it's been a century since the last pandemic on a scale that can even be compared to what we currently are experiencing, I think it's a good bet we are living though a "historical" period.
Those of us
d'un certain âge likely won't be around to know the verdict, but our children and grandchildren will, no doubt, regard this as one of the most eventful periods of their lives.
Anyway, while we're worrying about our own safety and that of our loved ones, obsessing about the latest medical news, chafing at the government restrictions, or just trying to game the vagaries of the local supermarket's supply chain, I think it's worth taking a breather every now and again to contemplate how remarkable is the experience the greater part of humanity is going through right now. I can't bring myself to go so far as to claim we should enjoy this moment, but I don't think it's a reach to suggest we should appreciate it.
