The deafening cacophony of our political landscape, coupled with the innumerable problems in the world, has blinded many of us to an incredible reality: most things actually are better today than they were in the past.
Don’t believe it? I didn’t either the first time someone pitched it to me — in fact, I laughed outright at the person. In hindsight, that probably wasn’t a wise move, given that the someone in question was a minister! Undaunted by my ignorance, she pointed out the following: Slavery is no longer legal in this country; women today not only may vote, they may hold a job and own property in their own names; U.S. workers now are guaranteed a minimum wage; nearly all of the feared communicable diseases of the past —polio, measles, diphtheria, smallpox— have been eradicated; racial segregation and discrimination are illegal; and child abuse or neglect is illegal.
Her list was much longer, but you get the general idea.
I protested that most of those “improvements” still had a long way to go. After all, people still face racial discrimination, women earn less than men for doing the same job, and some of those eradicated diseases are making a comeback. She acknowledged that there is always room for improvement, but stressed that those improvements can be made from a more advanced starting point today than 100 years ago.
Indeed, she said that the overall trajectory of the world gives her —get this — hope!
When I stopped to think about it, I had to admit that she was right.
Yes, we have a lot of problems in the world. But we’ve also solved a lot of problems. And when you look at it that way, it really changes your perspective on our power to effect change.
For example: 30 years ago, it was almost unthinkable that a single person should be allowed to adopt a child. Yet today, it’s so commonplace that the single parent adoption support groups that sprung up in the 1980s have all but disappeared today. There’s just no need for them anymore because our culture, for the most part, now recognizes that single people can and do provide loving, nurturing, stable homes for children. Single men still have somewhat of an uphill battle when adopting, due to negative (and stereotypical) ideas about their motives or nurturing abilities, but this is changing rapidly. I’m betting that thirty years from now, our kids will find this generation’s concern about single men adopting just as outlandish as we view our parents’ concern about single women adopting.
If we can change our perspective on something as significant as the definition of “family” —making it more open and inclusive for parents and children in just three short decades! — I have great hope for the future.
Hope that no more teenagers will know what its like to be cast to the vagaries of adulthood because they’ve aged out of foster care before finding a forever family.
Hope that we will no longer have a need for The Heart Gallery to showcase the photos of 13,000 Texas kids in need of adoptive homes.
Hope that our culture will realize children simply cannot grow up in the foster care system.
Hope that every child will have someone to call Mom or Dad.
You may think my hopes are impossible. But as Christopher Reeve once pointed out, all dreams seem impossible until we summon the will to make them happen: then they become inevitable.
This Thanksgiving, let us give thanks for the amazing advancements we’ve made as a people. And then let us summon the will to continue making them.
Thousands of children are counting on us. I have hope we will not let them down.
Post new comment