Why I'm Still an Optimist

You might think, with so much death, doom and disaster in the world, that optimism would be foolish or na?ve.

?Nope.

?I read exhaustively to get a variety of points-of-view. I hear people bemoan the increase in child abuse, domestic violence, racism, misogyny, homophobia, climate change and a lot of other truly bad stuff. But, in my experience, this stuff has always been there. Now, it’s being brought out of the closet to be heard, seen and addressed.

I was born in 1953 and, for many of my early years, when bad things happened to people, this stuff simply wasn’t talked about. We pretended it didn’t exist. Denial ruled! As a kid, I remember witnessing and experiencing plenty of examples of these “evils” and being told by my elders to “Mind your own business” and “Nice people don’t talk about things like that”.

I am glad to be living in 2025 where difficult, painful things are talked about so we can’t ignore them anymore. I never thought I’d live to see legal same-sex marriage, an African-American President, a female Vice-President, the Affordable Care Act passed, and Latina and African-American women on the Supreme Court.

That said, for many of us, the change process is happening too slowly. I count myself in that camp, yet, I see that change is happening.? For many years’ now, I’ve admired former Presidents Obama and Biden’s long-term strategies: change is a process and – if it’s going to “stick” – it’s often effective to make changes gradually.

I wish it wasn’t so, but huge, monumental changes often provoke huge, monumental push-back (e.g., Roe v. Wade). Trump Version 2.0 has promised enormous changes from day one of his second term. But, talk is cheap: let’s see what actually happens. Politicians usually promise us lots of amazing things to get elected, few of these promises see the light of day.

Obama and Biden consistently and persistently plugged away at making changes whenever they could. When they hit roadblocks, they tried to find another way to proceed. To me, the passage of Obamacare and the legalization of same-sex marriage are modern-day miracles. Yet, we’ve also gone backwards, with women’s rights to their bodies under attack as well as threats to trans people and immigrants and continued denial of climate change.

Two steps forward; one step back. Looking back historically, that’s how it seems to go.

I used to wash pots and pans in a restaurant. At the end of the night, I got the crustiest pots with burnt-on potatoes or gravy and had to get them clean for the next day’s shift. When I filled up these huge pots with soap and water and stuck my hand in to begin to scrub, it was gross. My whole arm was covered with disgusting pieces of food coming loose and floating upward.

If I stopped there, because it was so unpleasant, the pot never would have gotten clean. So, I kept going and – eventually – those floating pieces of food stopping covering my arm as the pot got cleaner and cleaner.

I think that the state of the world is like those crusty old pots. If we stop now and give up, when lots of disgusting stuff is floating to the surface, we lose. There is plenty of disgusting stuff in the news these days. But, all this formerly-hidden stuff is now coming out of the closet. And it’s a good thing. We can’t clean it up unless we know it’s there. Denial is no longer a good strategy: facing the painful truth is the first step out of the “closet” of ignorance.

Things are changing. Stories highlighting institutional, corporate and individual greed, abuse and cruelty are all over the media. We can no longer pretend that climate change is a fantasy (the recent LA fires bear witness to that). Racism, homophobia, misogyny and ageism are all-too-real. Now that we see these challenges clearly, we can begin/continue the hard work of change. And it is hard work; but we can do it. Indeed, we’ve already started.

And that’s why - ?at the age of 71 and with all the awful stuff happening in the world - I’m still an optimist.

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