I really really really want to be optimistic about the state of the world, but it sometimes seems as though a significant number of humans have gone mad. I find myself wondering if this is how it felt to be alive during the period of time between 1914 and the year of my birth in 1948. People who were alive back then witnessed a war that was supposed to end wars but did not, a worldwide depression, climate induced droughts, the rise of fascism, a second world war and the birth of communist China and the Soviet Union. Little wonder that my maternal grandfather often openly cried about what he witnessed happening across the globe.
I never met Grandpa Ulrich but I saw his library of books and heard snatches of his biography from my mother and one of my cousins who was old enough to have met him. He was apparently a learned man who found refuge in the United States of America when the politics of his homeland became unbearable. He created a good life in Houston, Texas with back breaking labor and determination. In spite of his worries about the ultimate fate of the world he was optimistic enough to make plans for one day retiring and moving to land that he owned where he would finally be able to farm. A fatal stroke ended both his dreams and his life before I even entered this world.
As a child I felt a kind of spiritual connection to the books that my grandfather had once read. I would run my fingers over the dusty tomes with a grand variety of titles. I was quite impressed with the idea that the man I had never met had devoured the contents of so many different genres. He must have indeed become a very learned man in spite of his lack of formal education. It did not surprise me at all to discover from my cousin that our grandfather had purchased and read a book every week which he enjoyed discussing with the eager lad who was his grandson. The titles suggest that he had a scientific bent as well as an interest in world history and politics.
My mother often described listening to programs on the radio with her father and her siblings. She noted that Grandpa demanded silence during news broadcasts when the President addressed the nation. He kept up with global political movements and often lectured his children on the need to always be vigilant and protective of freedom. He also constantly worried about the political patterns that he saw unfolding in Europe and fretted over the human tendencies to ignore warning signs that things were amiss. He urged his children to watch situations carefully and learn from them.
I suppose that both my father and my two grandfathers inspired me to keep tabs on the past, the present and the future of the world. My teachers further ingrained the importance of carefully analyzing the unfolding of current events to make predictions about where the world was heading in the future. The ignorance and innocence that might have made life easier for me faded rather quickly when I followed their lead by voraciously reading more and more to determine truth. Sometimes the conclusions that I have reached have not been so happy and I have more and more understood why the grandfather that I never met had often cried about the condition of the world and its people.
As we are poised for a year in which wars are raging, sabers are rattling and an important Presidential election will happen, I find myself fretting over what all of this will mean for the future. Like my grandfather I am keeping close tabs and even optimistically hoping that somehow we humans will join together to create a better future. I still believe that the goodness that is innate in all of us will ultimately triumph, but I worry about who will suffer as the human race gets its act together. There are so many reasons for concern.
We seem to be unable to agree on much of anything these days. We either believe that climate change is one of our major issues or think that the whole concept is a political hoax. We are on the side of freedom, but we seem to have different definitions of what that actually is. We want guns to be heavily controlled or freely available. We think that January 6, 2020 was an insurrection designed to incite a coup or a peaceful protest over a stolen election. We are sorrowful over the massive loss of lives during the pandemic or we think it was never really anything more than a case of the flu. We want to hear the unvarnished facts of history or move beyond the mistakes of the past by ignoring our transgressions. We can’t even decide who is the victim and who is the invader in the wars being fought across the globe. Our inability to agree has led to a standstill in which nothing ever happens to alleviate problems until we explode into a state of tragedy. This is what keeps me awake at night.
I really want 2024 to be a year of hope and peace and love. I know that we will never reach perfection but just seeing some signs of progress will help. It’s long past time for the people of the world to come together. History shows us that we never agree totally but there is room to consider all of our needs and desires. The dreams of my grandfather haunt me and give me hope.
All It Takes Is A Little Love 