8. History can guide us

The American left, someone once told a friend of mine, is bad at celebrating its victories. (The same may well go for the left in other countries, too.)

We have victories.

Some of them are very large, and are why your life is the shape it is.

The victories are reminders that we are not powerless, and our work is not futile.

The future is not yet written, but by reading the past, we see patterns that can help us shape that future.

To remember that things were different, and how they were changed, is to be equipped to make change – and to be hopeful, because hope lies in the possibility of things being different.

Despair and depression often come from the sense that nothing will change, or that we have no capacity to make that change.

Sometimes it helps to understand that this very moment is astonishing.

Early in this century, we had no adequate alternative to fossil fuel.