[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7rZbvi6Tj6E&hl=en&w=425&h=355]
How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world. – Anne Frank

I love this Tracy Chapman tune.

When you’re born in 1991, 1969 seems like a long time ago. I, on the other hand, remember it like it was yesterday, or at the very least, last week. I remember gathering around the black and white television in the dark of night to watch as Neil Armstrong took those first few steps. Man on the moon. How remarkable that seemed.

We spent the evening studying reviewing for our my son’s final exam in World History tomorrow. There, in a matter of 50 or so pages, highlighted in green ink, were moments that changed the world, snapshots in a photo album taken through our very own nationalistic lens. I imagined getting on a little boat like you do in Disneyland. The music starts, and with a slight jerk you leave the sunlight of the outside world and begin to float along the Time Travel Canal, through World War I and II, the rise and fall of the Soviet Union, the building of the Berlin Wall, the Cuban Missle Crisis, Détente and the Cold War. You watch revolution after revolution. The people rise up against injustice, transforming relationships, communities, governments and countries. Change happens.

I was in college when I visited Anne Frank’s house in Amsterdam. I remember standing with my fellow explorers waiting for the docent to pull open the large bookcase that concealed the stairs leading up to the annex where Anne and her family hid from the Nazis. On display on the walls were Anne’s newspaper clippings, preserved under glass. It was eerie and frightening and powerfully moving all at the same time.

The difference is in the vantage point. At 16, history seems like only words, descriptions of moments in a time long ago. It came in the form of images from books and movies or pictures painted by teachers who have to get through the entire history of the world, have to capture centuries of remarkable change in just nine short months. If they’re lucky, they make the point that this is amazing stuff. That this is about change. That things can happen if we set our mind to it, if we will it to be, if we work at it.

On the other hand, if you hang around long enough, you begin to realize that history isn’t something you read about, something that happened back then. At some point you realize that this is history. This is it. It’s happening now. That someday, this will be in the books too.

It’s hard not to get discouraged sometimes. There are times when it’s tough to hold on to the hope that things will change. When the nights are dark, we need to remember that morning will come, that the sun will indeed rise.

Isn't that the lesson, after all? We can improve the world. Change does indeed, happen.