Start With the Kids

According to a new poll 53% of my fellow Americans feel that 2021 has been the worst year of their lives. This negative view exceeds the previous winner, 2020, by a remarkably wide margin. I don’t quite know what to make of this. The results varied by age group with the most negative attitudes towards 2021 coming from the youngest responders, and the most positive from the oldest. Perhaps this is the result of the fact that the older you are the more bad years you have endured and therefore the greater perspective you have. Or maybe the older you are the more financially and emotionally secure you are. Who knows? Regardless, it’s troubling news to learn that so many people seem to be struggling.

Much of it centers around the ongoing pandemic. Our lives have all been changed by COVID. It has altered our daily routines in ways large and small. We are divided over the best way to fight it. We disagree about masks, vaccines, lockdowns, quarantines. We all have different ideas about what government’s role should be. Most of us are confused over what the rules are for social gatherings. With Christmas just a couple days away, every Omicron headline brings with it even more confusion. “IT’S RAMPANT, SPREADING LIKE WILDFIRE!! OMICRON SYMPTOMS MUCH MILDER THAN EXPECTED!! SOUTH AFRICAN OUTBREAK DISAPPEARING AS FAST AS IT ARRIVED!!”  It’s practically impossible to know what to think. So, I guess the poll results aren’t really surprising, when you think about it.

But, I would like to make the case for optimism. Yes, there are many reasons to despair, but there have always been. Living conditions on this planet 100 years ago make today’s world feel like heaven. Compared to the physical hardships endured by America’s Pilgrims, 2021 would be the Garden of Eden. Of course, advances in living standards courtesy of 400 years of technological, scientific, and medical progress isn’t the only measure of the quality of life. Human behavior changes over time, crime rates wax and wane, public manners and civic virtue rise and fall, and most of us would have to admit that in our lifetimes, most of these measures have fallen. But even so, if you are willing to look, the exceptions are abundant and everywhere. For example:

Have you heard about the 15 year old kid working the drive thru at a McDonald’s in Minnesota? Seems that a woman in the car at the window was choking on a chicken nugget. This kid, yells to her manager to call 911, then jumps out of the drive thru window, drags the woman out of her car and starts doing the Heimlich maneuver, which she had learned how to do by taking a babysitter’s class put on by the local Red Cross. When she realizes that she isn’t strong enough to successful perform the Heimlich, she recruits another customer in the drive thru line who is, and soon the nugget was expelled and the woman’s life saved. This heroism from a 15 year old, minimum wage earning kid. 

When the cops arrived and realized what Sydney Raley had done, they handed her two $50 bills as part of the local police policy of awarding $50 to people for personal acts of heroism during the holidays.

While there has always been and will always be reasons for despair, I firmly believe that negative is always trumped by positive. It’s a matter of what you’re looking for. I chose to seek out heroes. They are everywhere. The best place to look? Start with the kids. Always start with the kids. The next time you hear someone prattling on and on about how the “new generation” is deficient in this or that…walk away. Mister Rogers’ advice is still the best advice—“Look for the helpers”

Start with the kids.