And no, I'm not talking about tomorrow, or even tomorrow's tomorrow, or even the tomorrow after that. And I'm definitely not talking about the future of an individual life. Think weeks, months, years, centuries, even millenia in the future... and the life of the people therein.
In the midst of my studies, it often occurs to me that my life's work, all my efforts at crafting aspects of a social history, is the result of happenstance or sheer chance. I choose to study ancient history. I choose to explore, examine, and interpret the works remaining of a by-gone age, of a civilization whose only testament of existence is found in weather worn monuments, faded inscriptions, the ruins of buildings, and the fragmentary complilation of text. The grandeur of Rome, of its famed Republic and its notorious Emperors, of its legendary wars and
mythological gods, of its people, all reduced to its by products.
So after a civilization dies, what remains? What stories are left to be told? What lessons learned? And what is left to be remembered by?
And how is it possible for someone like me, living some two thousand years later, to have even the smallest hope of understanding what it must have been like for a woman--a woman--to live a life where she had nearly no say in the events of her life, and where she always lived under the hand of a man.
And what will someone living two thousand years from today, from this moment, from this breath, have to say about our own civilization? What will remain? What stories will be left? How will we be remembered?
Do them all a favor. Buy books. And write. Write in something tangible so that the person in the future can have something tangible to say, here, here is what a life was like.
