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Another year in the books. It was a tough year. Besides the usual war, famine, pandemic, school shootings, political divisiveness, and climate crisis, I also lost my mother-in-law and my mother this year. But as the cycle of life always proves, good things happen too. There have been billions of dollars (some of it actually bi-partisan) allocated to fight climate change (in Chile, all actions to fight climate change are bipartisan). Extremist candidates mostly lost in the November elections (even though our political division remains). The one billionth covid vaccine was delivered to the world's poorer nations. Doctors in Canada can now prescribe national park passes to help heal people. There are now enough solar panels to surpass 1 Terawatt of electricity (we still have a ways to go to meet the current 25,000 Terawatts of worldwide demand however, but we'll get there). The first black woman to serve on the Supreme Court was sworn in. A major nuclear fusion milestone was reached. The US government returned land to Native Americans in Montana and in California. A bipartisan bill on gun control was passed (it's not nearly enough but it hasn't happened in a long time). There is now a Jane Goodall Barbie doll! A Lyme disease vaccine is in its final phase of development (2025 is the target availability date). Patagonia's founder donated his $3 billion dollar business to fight climate change. Ukrainian war refugees are being helped by businesses and governments around the world. Scientists in Switzerland have developed transparent solar panels that can be used as windows. People in Iran and China are protesting for human rights.
The world is full of good news, but it rarely gets reported because bad news sells and gets more clicks. I was just reviewing the New York Times' best photos of 2022 and I'd say over 80% were depicting some tragedy (of which there were many). Two of the photos that struck me the most were one of a math notebook with a bullethole...it belonged to one of the school children killed in Uvalde, Texas; the other photo that got me was one that showed the daughter of new supreme court justice Ketanji Brown Jackson during her mom's swearing in ceremony...a look of total happiness and pride.
How do we deal with the knowledge of so much tragedy and still keep our sanity? The HBO series The White Lotus sort of addresses this. One of the couples seems oblivious to the worlds' problems and maintains an air of happiness by not watching the news. Another couple seems always to be dour and unhappy because they care too much about what's happening in the world. Do we have to choose one or the other? I think it's important to be aware of tragedy in the world, but you have to offset that for your own mental health. How? Some ideas are to get involved in a cause, search for all the good news happening in the world (it's harder to find), and choose to act with kindness in your interactions with people. With very view exceptions, most people in the world want the same things: safety and security for themselves and their families, and then if those needs are satisifed, maybe some happiness too. But there are some powerful forces out there that want us to hate each other because it benefits their bottom line to perpetuate this hatred and fear. I thought about this after reading two of this month's books, Born a Crime by Trevor Noah and Afterlives by Abdulrazak Gurnah. They both described how the countries' leaders (whether Apartheid in South Africa or German colonialists in Tanzania) specifically set out to pit the various black tribes against each other so that they could better control them and avoid having them rise up against them. I think it's a strategy that certain "news" stations use and certainly one that some politicians use in order to get re-elected. So don't buy into this ridiculous strategy. Don't hate someone just because they have a different political ideology. Don't hate someone because they seem different than you. All these differences are minor compared to our common desires for safety, security, and happiness.
