I'm open about the fact that I've long suffered from depression, culminating in 2016, when I was forced to quit teaching. While I worked as a teacher & researcher for a long time prior, I never considered what my love of history could offer me, in terms of relief... 
So I sat on my arse for a year, and in between staring gape-mouthed at the screen, I read. I ploughed through history books, any I could get my hands on. Most of it related to European history, but I also tried to cover the rich history of the Asian and African continents.
The first thing I learned, sounds counterintuitive, but I promise, it’s liberating: There’s no such thing as a great man, or woman, upon which history hinges. No one person can halt a massive historical moment or transition borne out of a million individual choices & actions.
The Western Enlightenment, or Golden Age of Islamic Science weren’t the result of singular figures, but a combination of factors that allowed discussion, debate & experimentation to thrive. Once people began talking more openly, their ideas could not be contained or suppressed.
Related to this, is an idea that sounds as similarly as bleak, but opens up a world of possibility: None of us really matter, in the scheme of things! We’re just here for a few brief moments, when viewed against the span of human history. In this, there is a real kind of freedom.
Estimates of all those ever born lie around 100,000,000,000, depending on methodology. Approximately 7% of everybody who has ever lived are alive right now. Many didn’t make it to their fifth birthday. That you did is a minor miracle. Follow your own path and make the most of it.
Moving on from this, yes - it is a miracle you’re up, walking and talking. So very many never had that chance, or the ability to read and write as you do. You have more power and choice than the overwhelming proportion of those who came before you.
Over the course of the 19th century in England, the infant mortality rate - counting those who died under the age of one - reached about 16%. Up to 30% of children did not see their 5th birthday. Since the turn of the 20th century, there has been a 90% decrease in those deaths.
Similarly, literacy rates have skyrocketed. Even if we again look at the 19th century, only around 60% of English people getting married were literate in 1840. By century’s close, almost 90%. An incredible leap took place, and the 20th century was even more impressive.
This isn’t to say that the problems we face don’t matter, or that we shouldn’t feel bad about them. Rather, personally, when confronted with the conditions in which we used to live, I am _grateful_ for the knowledge, technology & structures that surround me and help me function.
It may sound trite, but history show us that those bent on subjugation (mostly) receive their due - whether by blade or bullet, or damned later on, vilified or worse. In fact, one of the cruelest fates for a tyrant has been to be mocked - or erased from the narrative.
The Romans had the ‘damnatio memoriae’, where those considered traitors were erased from history - their statues toppled, their inscriptions erased, nearly every trace of them removed from the historical record. In fact, nearly every culture has had some form of this punishment.
If you don’t think that defacing or toppling a statue is all that much punishment, think on the recent response to taking down Confederate statues in the American South. It does matter. Memory matters. Memory especially matters to oppressors, those with a desire for control.
It’s the kind ones, increasingly, who seem to live on. Even in the darkest times - and the 20th century was full of them - there are those who heroism burns bright. People like the Scholls, or Rosa Parks. Even Anne Frank keeping a diary in her annexe gave light to millions.
There’s a more to say, but I want to end on this: We live in a world where the idea of one unified history itself is splintering. Rather than a grand narrative, historians celebrate the thousands of histories kept alive by those who, despite centuries of invisibility, persist.
History belongs to everyone - something I think about whenever I’m arguing someone over Nazis, or the Romans. There’s no entrance prince, no test - just a desire to read, learn, listen and explore. It’s a story we tell ourselves, and we never tell ourselves just one story, right?
Never be afraid to jump into history, to tease out the threads that excite you. See them where they lead. You might find that you learn more about yourself than you could ever have imagined. Hopefully, it might even comfort and help you face the future.
