"History"

This something that has shaped each one
of us-
impacting all, personally.
It is of exile and migrations,
of our grandparents' struggles...
Sometimes it includes generational trauma-
but also victories,
and successes, however small...
of building afresh
and the excitement of arriving in new lands.
It is more than the pages of textbooks,
more than learning dates and dry data,
more even, than empires' rise and fall-
the pageantry of politics.

History encompasses all this-
is a chronicle of nations, cultures,
but, ultimately it is humanity's narrative,
a record of individual lives...