When confronted by today’s conveyor belt of bad news, it is not unreasonable to feel a strong sense of hopelessness, even despair.

Putin’s war on Ukraine, Netanyahu’s war on Gaza, Trump’s war on democracy, the re-emergence of fundamentalisms of many varieties, resurgent militarism internationally and the existential threat that is climate change: despondency would seem justified.

If you look beyond our western bubble into the wider world, where the vast majority of the world’s people live, despondency would again seem logical.  Issues such as absolute poverty, illiteracy, malnutrition, rights abuses, and corruption remain routine.

And then there’s our own tiny Malta, a hotbed of criminal heists of one sort or another, official and unofficial - economic, political, and social.  A country ruled by a dominant ‘leadership’ determined to plunder our commonwealth for personal enrichment.   Anyone with a shred of genuine concern for the current or future well-being of this land would, most likely also veer towards despondency.

And all this occurring in the febrile atmosphere that is social media.

Observations such as those above form the backdrop for the question I am most frequently asked when teaching.  Why bother, when nothing seems to change, what can I realistically do about such issues?

In responding to such perfectly reasonable questions, my initial starting point is to refer to history.  Everyone will cite their own examples but, in my case, I refer to some of the big-ticket changes in my life to date.  The Northern Ireland peace process, the overthrow of Apartheid, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the end of the rule of the Generals in Latin America, the collapse of the Soviet Union and so much else. 

So, so much has changed, and those changes have impacted immeasurably on many millions of people worldwide for the better.

But history suggests so much more than that.  One of the outcomes of major success stories to date is that they are often simply taken for granted.  Rightly, they become part of ‘history’.  One result of this is that we can forget how such changes came about and what the key catalysts were. 

Exploring the dynamics of history and of our collective successes in overcoming adversity can help build confidence that change is not only possible, but that it is the norm, everywhere.  Together, we can change the world precisely because we have done so many times before. It can generate optimism, rather than despair.

History reminds us that what has been done can be undone and what has been undone can be redone.

Most of us never imagine ourselves as being architects of history rather than just its subjects. We seldom see ourselves as making history, rather than simply being in it. 

The famous Brazilian educator, Paulo Freire argued that he felt sad for those who thought and lived fatalistically or pessimistically for they had "lost their place in history".  They had forgotten that our daily struggles, big and small, are the very stuff of history.

We have been deliberately and falsely led to believe that the business of making and remaking the world (history) is the work of ‘big men and women’. Yet, a cursory glance at the peace process in Northern Ireland, at the struggle against Apartheid or the tearing down of the Berlin Wall highlights the reality that history is as much the work of ‘ordinary’ people doing ‘extraordinary’ things.

Bogus politicians (both ‘here’ and ‘there’) peddle the view that only they have the vision and capacity to deliver change. Many of them proclaim that what they offer or represent is the best of all worlds (countries) possible, that everything is fine, and we should leave the business of change to them. 

History can help us remember that we are not simply consumers of other’s ideas, products, and imaginings, but citizens actively involved in a world that is always in the making. This is most acutely so for younger people who need to critically challenge the world we have created and dumped on them.

Viewed historically and critically, the future has not yet been written.

Our first duty as well as our first opportunity to not only shape the world but also change it is to do so in circumstances and places we currently occupy. There are literally limitless opportunities to make change at a variety of levels and in all contexts. 

Contributing individually and collectively in those small and big ways is how we create the environment which makes historic change possible, even irresistible. 

As expressed by Eleanor Roosevelt in the particular context of human rights - ‘Where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small places, close to home – so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any maps of the world.’