“When I was younger, I had dreams of discovering something big....

“When I was younger, I had dreams of discovering something big.  I’m a historian.  I specialize in the end of the Roman Empire.  And I always wanted to uncover something flashy and exciting that would fascinate people.  I don’t mean that I’d actually dig something out of the ground.  I’m more of a bookworm.  I imagined myself in a reading room of the National Library, stumbling across something that others had overlooked.  But it never happened.  I’m 54 now.  I’m slowing down a bit.  And looking back, I don’t think I was ever a pioneer in anything I did.  I grew to realize that knowledge is a community, and my role would be to add a tiny grain of rice to the pile.  But that was still exciting for me.  Learning new things was the biggest passion of my life.  It was only frustrating when I tried to share that knowledge.  I had to accept that my passion isn’t universal, and in the end my work might only benefit a few people.  But that’s OK.  A few months ago I received a call from a teacher in Italy.  She told me that she’d read all my works.  And that she agreed with my interpretations.  And that she planned to incorporate them into her own work.  It was a wonderful feeling to know that my books weren’t just gathering dust in a library somewhere.  And that even if I didn’t blaze a path, I helped widen it for others”
(Madrid, Spain)