I love this post.
I've had a love of history for as long as I can remember. I was a member of a historical recreation group for many years. That said, I wouldn't choose to live in any other time but this one.
Modern antibiotics, sanitation, anesthetics, the easy availability of nearly any food any time of the year, clean water. These are treasures beyond price, that most people in the developed World take for granted.
Greater even than my love of history, is my love of music. I have access to almost any music I can think of, anywhere in the world, on a device I carry around in my pocket. Even more remarkably, I can instantly access nearly the entire sum of human knowledge, most of it for free.
This is an amazing time to be alive.
We absolutely face challenges, and some of them are going to be tough to overcome, but I would rather face the challenges of today than those of a hundred, or a thousand years ago.
That said, I am privileged to live the life I live, because my ancestors did the heavy lifting to make the World a better place. We cannot pay them back, we can only pay it forward, appreciate what they did, and see to it our descendants have reason to appreciate what we do.