News and Conversation: Finding the Good in 2022

As we enter the third year of Covid-19, we’re all hopeful of finding the good in 2022. In the past two years of the pandemic, the news has focused on what’s bad in our country, from both a health and political perspective. And as we talk with family and friends, our conversations have followed suit—a focus on what’s bad.

Rounding the bend into 2022, there was lots of talk about things getting better in the new year. Yet, as I look at the news, and listen to the conversations with my friends, there is not an awful lot of good in the content.

A local news network spotlights a daily segment on ordinary people who do extraordinary things for humanity. They focus on local folks who are making a positive difference in the Bay and beyond; and in my view, this daily dose of good is both inspirational and encouraging. They feature people such as the elementary school child forfeiting his birthday gifts, then organizing a community collection of toys for distribution to less fortunate kids. A national network featured a woman who set up a mobile salon on the street among the homeless, offering free haircuts and makeup. Things like this are happening across the country. These are not the money-making stories for the networks, but they represent the hearts of so many good people across the nation.

May I suggest that we start seeking out stories like these and interspersing them into our conversations.

I’m not implying that we go down the rabbit hole of denial and pretend that bad things aren’t happening. But there is a lot of good out there, and if we recognize it, and speak of it, perhaps we can raise the national consciousness and morale to focus more on what’s right in the country. We can raise our personal morale by seeing that the good we expect from people is still alive, and will hopefully flourish in greater numbers this year.

We can also look past the media and find the good right here in Safety Harbor. The other day, I was seated on a bench downtown, and a woman sat next to me, looking concerned. It seems that a Harborite had lost a dog, and a group, some friends and also some strangers, were gathering to comb the neighborhood in search of the pet.

I saved that story in my memory bank to interject when the next conversation starts to go south.