With all the gloom-and-doom in the world these days, it’s no wonder some of us feel so down. That’s why it’s important to search out something good and positive at least once a day, in the news and in our own lives, to remind ourselves all is not so bleak and foreboding.
We recently came across a column by New York Times writer Nicholas Kristof that had the effect of taking a good-mood pill.
There are some wonderful global developments going on that defy pessimistic assumptions. Among them are these, as noted by Kristof:
- Since 1990, more than 100 million children’s lives have been saved because of vaccinations and improved nutrition and medical care. Most children are no longer dying so tragically, horribly from malaria, diarrhea or intestinal worms.
- There has been an astounding decrease of extreme poverty in the world, with extreme poverty deemed as a person making less than the equivalent of $2 per day. For most of the world’s history, 90 percent or more of the people on this planet lived in extreme, debilitating poverty. That number is fewer than 10 percent today. And each day, about 250,000 people escape from the clutches of extreme poverty, according to World Bank figures. Also each day, about 300,000 more people get electricity for the first time; 285,000 get their first access to clean drinking water.
- Another exciting bit of news is 85 percent of the world’s adults now know how to read – a massive change in just a few decades.
- Family-planning methods mean parents are having fewer babies and investing more in the fewer children they do have.
- The number of deaths due to war, although still terrible, has decreased far below what it was from the 1950s through the 1990s and – thankfully – infinitely less than during the catastrophic wars of the 1930s and 1940s.
On a trip to Africa, Kristof met so many inspiring people.
“(We) also met,” he wrote, “an 18-year-old who had never been to school but had somehow built an astonishing three-foot electrical fan mostly out of cardboard scraps. It has a little motor, powered by a battery, and it worked. When kids like him are educated, imagine what they can accomplish – for themselves and for their countries.”
Kristof ended his column with these wise words:
“So let’s pause from our pessimism for a nanosecond of celebration about a world that is actually getting better. The most important historical force in the world today is not President Trump, and it’s not terrorists. Rather, it’s the stunning gains on our watch against extreme poverty, illiteracy and disease; it’s all those 12-year-olds out there who never catch leprosy and instead go to school.”
Nicholas Kristof, thank you for your exhilarating dose of good news. Thank you for the reminder this weary old world is progressing – toward the light and away from darkness.
