This life of man appears for a short space, but of what went before, or what is to follow, we are utterly ignorant.

"This life of man appears for a short space, but of what went before, or what is to follow, we are utterly ignorant. " Thus wrote Venerable Bede, referring to the stark contrast between that which a man knows first-hand and all the things that lie beyond the veil of his ken. And it is easy for one to feel as if one were no more than a single speck weltering along the river of Time, nescient of anything outside of his instant, disheartened by the oppressive magnificence of eternity. But clever men found a way to record each event that adorns the tapestry of Time, that their descendants might learn of all that came before them, and know fact from fiction, fancy, and fable. These men were the first historians, and it is they and their craft that resonate with me like nothing else. History has been for me a way of touching that ineffable mystery of all that came before, a means of feeling a continuity between my ancient progenitors and me. History, with all its wisdom, is what sustains in me a sense of belonging to this multifarious world and all its cultures. For if I were to look back upon the dawn of man, and trace my lineage through untold millennia to the present day, there is little doubt that I would see among my ancestors people from Africa and Middle East, Asia and Europe. And this unbroken connection is on every page of every history book; I see it through a glass, clearly every time I read about how those ancient men lived, and builded their cities, and peopled them, and carried the flames of their cultures into the dark corners of the world, into strange places whose maps had but one thing to say of them — hic sunt dracones. And this bond with those men kindles in me a certain pride of being their descendant. And each time I think on this inviolate kinship, it fills me with courage, exhorting me to make sure that when my forefathers look down on me, they not be ashamed.