Reasons to feel optimistic about the future… despite everything

During the pandemic and ongoing global news, I have noticed that most of my friends and family are slowly feeling less optimistic about our futures. I began to feel this way myself, but I decided to really confront why I was losing hope in the future and I came away with some newfound optimism that things will get better.

Below I discuss why I feel optimistic about the future of the pandemic despite new and seemingly worse strains evolving. I also discuss why I have hope for politics despite the polarity between right and left-wing and the terrible injustices and civil unrest that our daily news is filled with. And finally, I discuss a few positives I have found from being in lockdown this past year.

I want to first acknowledge that this is just my personal opinions and feelings of hope, as well as the privilege that I have had throughout this pandemic from stable living and financial situations.

The Pandemic and New Strains

From the eyes of a virus. What would make it a ‘successful’ virus? Evolution would say it is the virus that survives and spreads the most.
Consider a virus that, when it infects someone it kills them the same day 100% of the time. Is this virus going to be ‘successful’? Nope, it is going to die out real quick. With some ‘luck’, it might infect a few people but they will die too quickly for the virus to spread.

Now consider a cold or flu, some of the most successful viruses. They are successful not just because they are extremely contagious but because they don’t put their host out of the running by being so harmful for a prolonged period of time that the person isn’t willing to still go about their day to day lives during the contagious periods, allowing them to successfully spread. These viruses are mild inconveniences which is what helps them be successful.

Okay so what about a virus that has no symptoms for a month but after a month will probably kill you? Will this virus be successful? It will certainly spread quickly at first but because it is so lethal/causes so much discomfort that people will be much more cautious in their interactions with others making the virus have a harder time spreading.

Because of this, the strains of a virus that will stick around are the strains that are the most contagious but cause the least inconvenience to the host. For this reason, I am optimistic about covid-19 and these new strains. The worst of them will do some bad damage but will have a hard time being successful as a virus and will die off while the milder ones will have an easier time spreading and therefore surviving (Thanks evolution!).

Politics, Polarity and Civil Unrest

The news is bad… consistently. Being quarantined has made me realize that my only actual connection and source of information to the world and its state is through the news and social media.

From a journalist’s perspective, their news article is successful if it gets a lot of views. To get a lot of views the news needs to get people to react to it so strongly that they want to share it. A negative news article that creates a sense of urgency would usually be the most successful. Naturally, the news that gets presented to us every day is the news that is the most likely to cause us to negatively react and feel a sense of urgency. Every day we are presented an aggregation of all of the most negative news that makes us feel a sense of urgency to react (usually catered specifically to us). However, being a global society no single person’s actions can fix this news causing us to feel consistently overwhelmed with no control to do anything about it.

There are problems and injustices in our world, a lot of them. However, I believe we are making progress. Democracy was founded on the idea that there is the world as it is and the world as it should be. As Canadians (and I believe, as all people), we have shared values — openness, respect, compassion, willingness to work hard, to be there for each other, to search for equality and justice (as said by both Trudeau’s we have had as Prime Minister. Whether you believe in their politics or not I feel that these values are generally shared.) A world that upholds these values is the world as it should be, the world we are working toward. Then there is the world as it is, where these are not always shared or acted on for all people. But consider the history of democracy. At its start there were slaves, women could not own property or have money let alone vote and have a career, there were divisions and polarity among the people.

Since Democracy started we have made steady and slow progress in our policies to make the world one that upholds our shared values. Changing our policies with democracy has been made a purposefully slow process because it requires a significant amount of debate through the entire nation before accepting or rejecting a new policy (making our laws less volatile). The polarity in politics has been there since the very beginning, the values we are working towards are the same across this divide, what is different is how we think the best way to build towards a world that supports these values is.

Now you are likely thinking that whatever political view you are not aligned with are definitely not working towards these values. Remember that the news brings us the worst news that causes the most reaction from us. It brings us the news of extreme cases. Social media creates echo chambers that simplify and dumbify the views of the opposing side. For instance, I consider myself to be more liberal than conservative and I see this reflected in my social media, the views that conservatives hold are shown to be horrible. Yet what is actually happening because of the echo chamber is that the original argument made by the conservatives has been taken by liberals and dumbified, made simplistic to the point that it is no longer recognizable as the original argument and just incites a strong negative reaction (thanks to how news is shared) This is not purposeful, rather a result of how our news system works when combined with echo chambers.

What this means is that we actually have core values shared across this divide, more than we believe. When I, as a liberal think of the conservatives and the behaviour and beliefs I think they have, this is vastly different from what conservatives will think of themselves and vice versa.
I am developing my understanding of what beliefs held by conservatives are, and I would like to go into more detail about my current understanding. However, this is slightly tangential to the point.

The point is that Democracy works through national debates and disagreement. Policies slowly are created in response to the sentiment of the people. And the people have many shared values that current news and social media completely neglect to reveal. For this reason, I am optimistic that the world, even now, is slowly moving from how it is, to what it should be, a place that promotes the values of openness, respect, compassion, willingness to work hard, to be there for each other, to search for equality and justice.

Positives of Lockdown

Since late February 2020, my city went into lockdown. I live right in the middle of a city so lockdown doesn’t mean I get a nice backyard to hang out in or nature walks, it means staying in a ~500 square foot apartment with my partner. Since this February I have rarely left for more than essential trips to the grocery store or a dentist appointment when I had a filling fall out. I have been extremely lucky with my living situation and a quote that I think is important here is

“We are not all in the same boat. We are all in the same storm. Some are on super-yachts. Some are in lifeboats.”

I am speaking from a place of privilege and I want to acknowledge that not everyone is in the same boat as I am.

At the start of the lockdown, I had considered myself a mild extravert. Life always felt like there were far too many opportunities and I wanted to show up to as many as I could, however, I often found myself all over the place mentally and physically.

Since lockdown, my bubble has gotten smaller and… better. I speak with fewer people, but each of the people I do speak with I have better relationships with. I have longer calls, I am more open with them and they are more open with me. My life feels like I have a small close-knit community even though none of them live in the same city as me. There is now a really good excuse to ask someone how they are really doing and there is a great excuse for them to answer honestly.

During my days, I have noticed that I get restless staying in the same place, but I have come to realize that a short jog will buy me 24 hours of feeling positive. If the world feels overwhelming, without changing a single thing or solving any problems, just getting my heart rate up a bit and stretching my legs makes me feel like it is okay that the world doesn’t have its shit together as long as I work on getting mine together.

I have learned that I procrastinate when I am not taking care of myself. Getting work done becomes infinitely easier when I am in bed by 11 pm and wake up for 9 am. That a short, not strenuous jog or a few pushups, not even a full workout makes getting to work something I actually want to do.

Being in lockdown has made me realize that feeling good is based on how well I take care of myself which is completely in my control.

I hope you are able to take away some optimism about the future.