The past was not in black and white👴🏽.

Hey friends,

I was talking to a friend recently of how every time I reminisce about the past from 1999 going back, I think of it in black and white😅. And I know I am not the only one.

So many historical pictures were taken with cameras that still didn’t incorporate colour. And history books kept them that way. It is not surprising then, that our minds recollect the past as being in black and white. It’s a reminder of how much photography influences our sense of what the past looked like that it’s hard not to imagine that substantial bits of history must have unfolded in black and white.

But of course, the greater and more extraordinary truth is that everything has always looked pretty much exactly as it does right now.

When Roman soldiers were building the Via Appia in 312 BCE, their very first Roman road, or when Alexander the Great started his legendary battles by overthrowing the Achaemenid Persian Empire, then under King Darius III, in 336 BC.
Even then, the sky was every bit as complete in its colour spectrum as it is out of the window today. Their skin tones were identical to ours, wood and leaves were as hard and crisp as those we know from the forest today.

Apparently, most people today, especially teens and kids, envision people of the past as uncouth, archaic or rather barbaric. They consider that they who set the foundation for our current world were in no measure wise as we are, or clever, or ‘updated’ or ‘modern’ as we are. They regard them as being black and white in not only their appearance, but in their very way of life.

But, we must envisage a far greater psychological similarity than we’re perhaps generally prepared to accept. Defecating, wiping one’s nose, sleeping, climbing a tree, quenching one’s thirst, regretting, sobbing, feasting, dying – all would always have felt as they do in our day. Despite all the differences that historians spend their careers informing us about, the past will always be far more like right now.
And our ancestors (wahenga if you like😅) – even those who wore goat skins, ate porridge from an ‘agwata’ [gourd], or worshipped Were from the Maragoli Hills – were far more like us than we like to believe.

Of course, there’s a certain delight in picturing ourselves as in-the-know, modern, advanced, free of cobwebs and traditional prejudices, while relegating all those who came before us to a faraway realm of error and stupidity. We put a wall between the now and the armies of our absurd ancestors, who fought with clubs, followed cultic ideologies and had to die in the hands of mosquitos due to lack of Malaria control measures then.

We are surely different, we see things clearly, definitely in colour now. There are no filters across our lenses.

As long as we insist the past was entirely different, we will never appreciate that it was the death of a child somewhere due to Polio, that enabled us today to be beneficiaries of the Polio vaccine. We would never appreciate that the wars fought with bows and arrows back then led to a rather more peaceful correlation between tribes. That a lover’s desire to communicate with his fiancée overseas laid the groundwork for mail and texts. That an unlearned explorer’s desire to know what lay over the horizon enabled for the now cruise ships that we so adore!

Yet of course, they too once stood on the summit of time. It was once very ‘cool’ to wear the largest Ostrich feather on your head, or aspire to own a slave or have 12 wives, work in the coal mine or wonder who the Council of Elders would anoint as Ruoth (King).

They lived in a world as fresh, even fresher, and brightly coloured as ours – and were as deluded, anxious of the future, and mortal as we are.

✍🏽Quote of the Week

😃You might have missed my most popular writings😍(so far..)

1. The shortcut is probably too long🥱. - This was my favorite post for May. It was also one of my best performing ones so far. It is about this not-so-secret way of doing things the recommended way, and not “your way”. Check it out.

2. Inside the mind🧠 of a Master Procrastinator⏳. - this is for almost all of us coz we all procrastinate at least once a while. Read the thought process of a master procrastinator.

PS: If you have a few seconds to spare, please hit the <reply> button and let me know what you thought of this email. I’d love to hear your thoughts on it and what could be improved. It also reminds me that there’s another person reading it on the other end of my screen😅. Thanks.

Have a wonderful week ahead!

✍🏽Reagan.