I have always made it a point to follow the news, priding myself in being an adult by watching the news channel. This, of course, did not mean that I was actually processing all the news that came my way. After all, what are deficits on obscure budgets and the destruction of cities to a young child? I would ask questions, but would rarely get the answers I wanted. The "What's happening?"s were answered with "You don't need to worry about this." The "Who's that?"s were answered with "They're not important." But all the whys, the "Why is this happening?", the "Why can't we do anything?", the "Why aren't they doing anything about it?", were answered with silence. I would ask again and again until I was told to be quiet. This would annoy me beyond measure. The matter would be dropped, and I would leave the kitchen unsatisfied, running up the stairs to Google my whys.
However, I have come to acknowledge that perhaps the whys were questions without answers. This acknowledgment brought insecurity in my adolescent years. I derived much comfort from the black and white question and answer structure for life that school fooled me into subscribing to. Questions were always accompanied with answers, found in manicured, polished textbooks and the minds of all-knowing teachers.
The whys continued to plague me. Despite my education, experience, curiosity, and accumulated knowledge, the whys would always lurk in the shadows. The past few years have been particularly rough in that aspect, with all the bad we hear in the news. From epidemics to civil wars to terrorism to police brutality to disheartening political decisions, it isn't a secret that it seems like the world is going to hell in a handbasket.
A quick scroll of one of my news apps with breakfast is an easy way to get myself down in the morning. Every day only seems to be getting worse, with terrorist attacks and xenophobic political rhetoric popular themes in the day's news reporting.
Pessimism only continues to grow with the pervading feeling of being unable to do anything to help fix the situation. Essentially, the feeling of powerlessness feeds this pessimism, leading to more apathy and much lower expectations for the world.
It just doesn't seem like any of this will get any better. At this point, one may wonder if it's even worth it to care anymore, beginning the dangerous descent on the slope of apathy.
I don't have the answer to how to stay always optimistic about the current state of the world. To deny that all is not well in the world would mean turning a blind eye to the places and people that need our attention, sympathy, and assistance the most. However, we can't let pessimism take us down the road to apathy.
The world may not be a peaceful place (it never was to begin with), but we need to acknowledge another fact that is ignored and rarely reported about. We need to take pride that we are living in an era more peaceful and progressive than almost all of human history.
The child mortality rate has decreased in the past few years. Literacy rates are on the rise, with the gender gap on literacy slowly narrowing. War is actually less prevalent in the world than it was in the last few centuries, the conflicts that we have seen in the last decade merely internal, rather than fought between two nations. ISIS is weakening as it struggles to recruit new members and loses territory. The economy is growing and poverty is declining.
Despite controversial dialogue and hate speech in the current election, we live in an era where racism and sexism are frown upon, in an era where we make it a point to be more inclusive to those of different identities, experiences, cultures, and orientations.
Simply, we must remember that we will always tend to hear the bad news, rather than the good. Media has only made it much easier to have access to bad news. Things may seem worse now than they were before, but this may mean that you have grown and matured to process that maybe, reality isn't that great.
It isn't as awful as we think it is, either.
