Watching History Unfold

His­tory is a lit­tle more inter­est­ing as you get older — not ancient his­tory but cur­rent his­tory. The last cen­tury has been the fastest chang­ing one of all recorded time. The last decade has seen mind-bending advances in var­i­ous tech­nolo­gies. The terms used to describe them sound like sci­ence fic­tion jar­gon. How­ever, the most inter­est­ing changes have been seen in your own life. You are a char­ac­ter in some­thing that looks like the shadow side of a James Bond episode. No, you are prob­a­bly not in a high speed chase scene, but you are the mid­dle of com­plex plots for power. You just may not be aware of it.
Ancient peo­ple saw them­selves as play­ers in the great drama between good and evil. Chris­tian­ity opens the door of exis­ten­tial pos­si­bil­i­ties to ele­vate the most ignored to the sta­tus of saints in the great apoc­a­lyp­tic con­test (that is tak­ing place in some unseen dimen­sion). Being kind to another per­son is part of “slay­ing the great dragon” in the eter­nally mythic realm. We join into the bat­tle of “prin­ci­pal­i­ties and pow­ers” right where we are.
The most sig­nif­i­cant his­tory is not about what hap­pens in a mere pres­i­den­tial con­test. Polit­i­cal fig­ures come and go by the droves. The his­tory that really mat­ters is the one in which you are the main char­ac­ter. That is the account that will affect you directly and for the longest period of time. You are not, and never have been, a minor char­ac­ter. In the imme­di­ate con­text of life, you are the one that feels the pain and the plea­sures of life. You are the one mak­ing the choices that affect your exis­tence. The events that form con­cen­tric but pro­gres­sively dis­tant cir­cles around your life are less impor­tant the far­ther they are away from where you are right now. What­ever really mat­ters is hap­pen­ing in the room where you are at this very moment.
Never under­es­ti­mate what it is to be a human being or to have a con­ver­sa­tion with one. Des­tinies are changed by words spo­ken in com­mon con­ver­sa­tions between every­day peo­ple. Today is another chap­ter in the never-ending story of your life. Pay atten­tion. This one day in his­tory will never be again.