Weekend self-care open thread: 1989, Berlin

It's safe to say that most of us remember the Revolutions of 1989.

The Soviet Bloc collapsed. Nations which had been under the Soviet Union's domination broke away. It happened with such rapidity that it's hard to conceive. Things seem to be unchanging, until they're not.

Fast forward almost four decades. We are in a period of global instability, mostly as a result of the events of that momentous year. Far from the "end of history", we have nations jockeying for dominance. The liberal democratic world order which for a time ruled the post-Soviet era is under threat, even within the West.

But I am a firm believer in Dr. King's words: The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice. 

As JRR Tolkien wrote: But in the end, it's only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer.

As a college student at the time, my TV at home was glued to CNN. (Oh, CNN. How you have fallen so low, trying to out-Fox Fox News.) I watched the fall of the Berlin Wall. I watched a man stand against People's Liberation Army tanks in Tiananmen Square. I watched the Soviet putsch fail. Those were heady days, where everything seemed possible.

Those are not the days in which we live today. But that's no reason to give in to despair. This shadow is a passing thing. Human history has been one of long, slow progress. But progress there has been. And progress will continue, even though it is born out of pain. (Everything human is born out of pain.)

When the world sang in a birth of freedom, the blessed tzaddik Leonard Bernstein conducted Beethoven's Ninth Symphony in Berlin. This will be the only video for this weekend's self-care.

As always, my dear friends, be ever kind to yourselves and those around you. It's the only thing which moves the world forward.