Making Optimism Your Style

The world around us

Making Optimism Your Style

I was an intern in Senator Jake Garn’s office in 1981.  That’s where I first saw and used a fax machine.  I viewed it as a miracle!  We’d use a typewriter, type the message we wanted to distribute, attach it to a drum on the fax machine and then hit send.  Moments later, the distinct sound of a telephone modem would signal a connection and I’d watch the drum spin for almost ten minutes as it transferred data to its intended location in far off Utah.

Now, here I sit, in the far-off future from 1981 and marvel at the life you and I live today.  It’s a life that, people just under forty years ago, would have viewed as impossible.  And, for some reason, we are in a time, living a life, that often seems impossible for us to recognize as amazing by any historic standard.  The food we eat is just one incredible example of such thoughtlessness.

Until the development of long-distance transportation, farming was a local business.  Now, we walk through grocery stores and pantries alike to purchase and consume fresh fruits and vegetables grown, in season, on the other side of the planet for our consumption in the dead of winter.  And, this food has fed more than bodies alone.  It has created new businesses in parts of our world that were previously “undeveloped.” As a result, by 2015, the United Nations reported global malnutrition had declined to the “the lowest level in history.”

Here are other optimistic facts Gregg Easterbrook unveiled to me recently.  Disease rates are in “long-term decline” and longevity is the highest ever.  “US industrial output is at an “all-time record.”  Inflation has been “low for a decade” and mortgage, and other borrowing costs are at “historic lows.”  And crime?  Yes. Crime, “especially homicide,” is in long-term decline as well.  These are all facts that have largely gone unreported in both social and news media.  So, it’s easy to feel as if our way of life will soon end and to have continuous negative feelings.  It has even become popular to be negative, so when I began feeling optimistic over such positive facts, I thought I’d better ask my friend James Grimm, a seasoned expert, questions to see if I was off in some way.

Jim is a retired Chief Financial Officer of more than two global companies, so when we were working together this week, I asked, “Have you been surprised with how quickly our economy has rebounded from 9.11 and the economic crash of 2008?”

He responded with, “Yes!  It just goes to show how resilient we are as a people, not just in the United States, but across the world.  We’re accomplishing things we never dreamed as possible!  Life is getting better and better.”

His response made me feel much better as it also runs against conventional wisdom.  Perhaps it’s because optimism has simply gone out of style?  But, there is no need for you and I to let optimism disappear from our lives!

I was an intern in Senator Jake Garn’s office in 1981.  That’s where I first saw and used a fax machine.  I viewed it as a miracle!  We’d use a typewriter, type the message we wanted to distribute, attach it to a drum on the fax machine and then hit send.  Moments later, the distinct sound of a telephone modem would signal a connection and I’d watch the drum spin for almost ten minutes as it transferred data to its intended location in far off Utah.

As you read this, in 1981’s far off future, on your computer, a freshly printed paper, or on a pad, stop for one moment and let the miraculous mechanism you’re reading it on signal optimism to your brain.  Then say, “I live in a far off intended future where miracles occur in every moment of every beautiful day!”