What else, if not individual acts of complicity, like that of that neighbor—or acts of defiance, like that of my grandfather—form the historical waves, the irresistible current of events that shapes the foundation of every human society.
Where wind carries the smell of the crematorium And a bell in the village tolls the Angelus The Spirit of History is out walking. He whistles, he likes these countries washed By a deluge, deprived of shape and now ready. A worm-fence, a homespun skirt is pleasant to him, The same in Poland, in India, Arabia.
Czesław Miłosz
Even after I became a naturalized citizen, it took me several years before I stopped having nightmares about being back in communist Poland with no possibility of leaving and returning to the States. I would wake up with feelings of deep dread and hopelessness, and it would take me hours before my assaulted mind could ease into accepting that “it was only a dream.” Poland and the rest of Eastern Europe were already free of communism, which had collapsed in 1989, but my mind was not. One part of my mind circled around the gratitude I felt for living in a country where free speech and freedom of the press were considered fundamental rights, a given in a functioning democracy, while another part of my brain couldn’t unshackle itself from remembering.
More here: https://popula.com/2020/12/15/the-spirit-of-history/
