Jack of Harts

In fourteen hundred ninety two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue.

I learned that rhyme as a child, and it has always stuck with me.

He was part of the Age of Exploration, when Europe started looking outward again. They had rebuilt from the Fall of Rome and Muslim Invasions that shattered much of Southern Europe. The Spanish crown was actually in the process of liberating the last of the Muslim conquests in Spain as Columbus sailed. The Black Death that had wiped out a third of Europe was over a century in the past.

It was a new age of looking beyond immediate survival and wondering what was out there, beyond the borders of the tiny kingdoms that still survived. Discovering new places and revisting ones long lost to legends. Columbus sought to find a new route to India, not realizing that what we would call the Americas completely blocked his path there. But he did find his way here, and he ushered in a whole new age for America.

And in our modern age, we still admire his courage and determination to explorer. We’ve taken that as the ethos of America. We look for new ways of doing things, and for new places to see. Just as we imagine Columbus did.

So Happy Columbus Day. May you see something new to you today.