The other day, my wife and I were discussing something that has become a yearly phenomenon, thanks to the ‘doom-and-gloom’ culture that we have unfortunately adopted over the past few years.
When we scroll social media – which maybe we should just quit doing – we see multiple posts and reposts about what a terrible year it has been; how we are all just lucky to have made it through 2022; how things couldn’t possibly get worse than they have been.
How many of you had a father, grandfather or a great-grandfather who spent New Year’s Day 1944 in France or Germany?
How many people in this world live in poverty? I do not mean the kind of poverty where you don’t have extra money, but have enough to feed yourself and live in a roofed dwelling: I mean the type of abject poverty that has made you witness to malnutrition, even starvation.
Covid-19 was a terrible thing. We lost people we loved. We did suffer as a society in many ways from its effects. But what about the rest of our lives? Are we going to get to the end of every year and carry on about how terrible everything is? Did the virus somehow give us all permission to complain endlessly about the trouble we have seen?
I complain. We all complain. But I am telling you this: if I have to read about how four famous people died and made this year or that a complete disaster – even when spoken or written with intentional exaggeration – I might really each my breaking point.
What about the fact that there’s still food available to us?
What about the relative peace that our nation has been experiencing for several years now?
What about the fact that most of us have homes and furnaces and families?
If you allow the pandemic, the dangers of which we can see has in great part have passed, to continue to dominate your view of the general wellbeing of the human race, then I pity you.
Nobody made me the boss of Facebook, nor will I ever hold such a title. If I did, however, I would begin instructing posters to use better discretion in sharing their negativity with the world. Life is hard for all of us: fussing and carrying on about how bad the year has been – well, that’s just bad form.
I make no claim to be perfect on this issue. Though I don’t expressly remember doing so, I am sure I have jumped into those conversations where people say things like, ‘I wish this year would just get over with’ or ‘After the disaster that was 20_ _, anything would be an improvement.’ But I will do so again.
The years are what we make of them. There are opportunities, and there are setbacks. There are gains and losses. There are smiles and tears. If we were to honestly tally up the good in one column and the bad in another and compared them, our Dec. 31 social media posts should pretty much read like this:
‘20_ _ was a year to remember. We lost this dear one, and we welcomed that one into our family. We didn’t have everything we wanted, but we made it through another year. We’re happy to have all of you in our lives!’
Consider this: there is someone in your life who ha lost more, suffered more, grieved more than anyone else you know – and I would bet without hesitation that this individual who has suffered most does not complain nearly as much as other folks you know who have endured less. People fuss because they’re fussy, not because they have more about which to complain.
So this is my pledge, and with it I’ll attach a request: I promise I won’t fuss about what a terrible year it has been here in my column (or on social media), and would like for you folks not to jump into the negativity, either. Most of our existence lies in our perceptions, so my hope is that we work diligently to see the positive aspects of this life.
Matt Pearl owns and operates newspapers in King City and Albany.
