Truisms can conflict: On one hand, social studies teachers point out that those who refuse to learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat it. Conversely, stockbrokers caution us that past performance is not a reliable indicator of future returns.

During the pandemic, it often feels that both points of view are simultaneously inadequate and comforting. Inadequate because, from a historical perspective, where do we even look for lessons? The 1918 pandemic occurred in a world so technologically distant that to refer to it for guidance might be akin to Ukrainians shopping for World War I weaponry to fight the Russians today.

Yet a long-term view is comforting because, despite the ever-quickening march of technology, human behavior remains somewhat consistent. That's the lesson historians warn us not to lose sight of. We can get discouraged by the mistakes we've made trying to combat an unfamiliar and mercurial virus, but over time, humans have proved to be really good at problem-solving. We'll get there.

In getting there, we haven't yet found emerging patterns to be predictive. That's not specific to the pandemic; it's what underlies the disclaimer guidance given to investors. But the pandemic has given us good examples: Vaccines performed well in preventing infections ... until the first delta breakthroughs occurred, followed by an avalanche of omicron breakthroughs.

Still, even though vaccines seem to have less ability to prevent infections from variants than had been originally hoped, investing in vaccines has lowered hospitalization and death rates among the fully vaccinated. In retrospect, developing vaccines at warp speed was a wise investment, despite inconsistent returns.

This year feels curiously both upbeat and adrift. Upbeat because travel demand is nothing short of astounding. Overwhelming, in fact, in light of staffing shortages, supply chain disruptions, lower availability of inventory and high airfares and hotel rates.

Adrift because it's harder and harder to identify meaningful patterns in the present. I was struck by a recent observation from Cruise.com president Anthony Hamawy: "You're not working off the trends that you had pre-Covid, because there are no real trends to this."

In December, Gary Hoover, executive director of the American Business History Center, wrote a wonderful essay titled "Seeing change through history's lens," which provides a helpful perspective for present times. If Hoover's name sounds familiar, it may be because he has a travel connection: Among the companies he founded was TravelFest, conceived to be the first "big box" travel store. He got three of them open before they collapsed in the wake of airline commission cuts.

(Disclosure: One of the companies he founded, now called D&BHoovers, published a book produced by my former company, Weissmann Travel Reports, now part of Travel42.)

His essay opens with a Steve Jobs quote: "You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards," and ends with one from Winston Churchill: "The further backward you look, the further forward you can see."

Both relate to Hoover's essay that lies between them. "We must be careful to avoid the common trap of thinking that our own era is somehow different, more complex or faster-changing than previous times," he writes, before listing 20 society-changing developments that occurred in the 60 years between 1870 to 1930, including electricity, radio, motion pictures, telephones, automobiles and airplanes.

Historian Fernand Braudel, also quoted, provides context to help frame where we are today: "History may be divided into three movements: what moves rapidly, what moves slowly and what appears not to move at all."

Hoover clarifies: "We read and hear of earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanoes but sometimes forget to study plate tectonics." And, he suggests, perhaps the plate tectonics below our own surface is "human nature itself, our innate curiosity about the world around us, our generosity to our families and communities and our drives for survival and for perpetuation of the species."

Among trends that have legs, travel does get a mention: "Financial, educational, healthcare, entertainment, travel and other consumer and business services will be the 'growth engines' of coming decades," Hoover observes.

The American Business History Center website is a rabbit hole of absorbing corporate success stories and cautionary tales, which in aggregate reveal that, indeed, individual leaders' assessments of contemporary events drive enterprises toward lofty heights or ignominious failure.

And in the concluding section of his essay, Hoover writes, "If there is one thing we know about humanity, it is our ability to tackle challenges and figure out ways to make things better, to innovate. ... [Our] future depends above all on us, our ability to understand change and our confidence in our abilities to effect change."

During these past two years, it has often felt like we've been navigating without a compass. But in reality, the path forward has always been charted by the compass within, one that relies on our past experiences and relationships combined with our species' eternal drive toward a better future.

We'll get there.

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