A few posts ago I noted that there was no time like the present to be alive, if for no other reason than we have modern medicine and dentistry. There are lots of reasons really (life expectancy, poverty reduction etc.), but there are also huge downsides, like nuclear weapons and global warming.

Strangely enough, a Quora topic on this subject popped up on my email a day ago and it got me thinking again. Is all the stress and anxiety of the modern world worth our living in modern times, as one contributor argued, or is too high a price to pay? Is there another time and place that would be acceptable?

It may be that my current immersion in medieval studies is twisting my perspective, but the life of a monastic in the late middle ages might have its appeal. The lot of a monk in a large Benedictine House would not have been unpleasant, especially when compared to the ninety-percent who were toiling peasants. Food was grown and prepared onsite or nearby, the beds were warm and the place was safe. Moreover, as a member of the praying class, a monk was concerned with the spiritual welfare of himself and the wider community. Sure, there were many designated prayer and service times, including one at 2am, but that was part of the deal. You renounced the world to live a life of contemplation and prayer.

Even better, if one had the chance to be a scribe, then the opportunity to read some of the works of the ancient world would become a possibility, albeit at the rate of one slow page at a time. You might ask how sitting at a table painstakingly copying books by hand, being restricted to the monastery precincts, having nothing other besides prayer and contemplation, could possibly hold the attention or interest of someone born today?

My answer is simply this - there would be no problem at all. If you are going to live in another time then you don't take your modern self with you, you are born into the medieval world view, entirely. Gone is the Big Bang; hello, the Earth at the centre of the universe! Too big a sacrifice? How could you miss what you don't know about nor could even contemplate? The cocoon of religious certainty, the surety of where you had come from and where you were going, the passing rhythm of the seasons, might surpass the frenetic change and uncertainty of the contemporary world.

Yes, sitting at a desk in the scriptorium, copying a text by Aristotle, might be a pleasant enough occupation in another time and another life. Not everyone's cup of tea, I dare say, but even now, I hear the gentle patter of rain in the courtyard and the exquisite sounds of chanting from the church.

Ah, life before The Great Vowel Shift!