Last week I was visiting my sister and brother-in-law in Texas, and I was inspired at Chipotle. We had the best time. (I mean, in general on that trip...outside of Chipotle too.) On the Chipotle bag, there are now Cultivating Thoughts. It's some good, thought provoking ideas getting magnified in concise and interesting ways.
I read this bag and got quieted down inside, because it contrasted what is so often gloom and doom and very real heartache all around us. Lots of times, things are difficult. And lots of times things are good. I experienced that holy mix of raw life and God's peace this week. It's amazing where you find it. Walking quietly across pavement outside of school in the morning in the St. Croix Valley, everything all fog and quiet and muted fall colors. Completely beautiful. In seeing a 7th grader try out (and succeed in sharing) his dry sense of humor. Completely funny. My Chipotle bag. Completely inspiring.
I very much believe that God has this world all completely figured out and when I get over myself and forget about 'should' or 'what if', a day is more of an adventure than anything else. He brings plans and purposes to you, and you can see it in everything. The Chipotle bag just added to that general good feeling last weekend in Texas. This is what it said...
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A Two-Minute Case for Optimism
By: Steven Pinker
It’s easy to get discouraged by the ceaseless news of violence, poverty, and disease. But the news presents a distorted view of the world. News is about things that happen, not things that don’t happen. You never see a TV crew reporting that a country isn’t at war, or that a city hasn’t had a mass shooting that day, or that millions of 80-year-olds are alive and well.
The only way to appreciate that state of the world is to count. How many incidents of violence, or starvation, or disease are there as a proportion of the number of people in the world? And the only way to know whether things are getting better or worse is to compare those numbers at different times: over the centuries and decades, do the trend lines go up or down?
As it happens, the numbers tell a surprisingly happy story. Violent crime has fallen by half since 1992, and fiftyfold since the Middle Ages. Over the past 60 years the number of wars and number of people killed in wars have plummeted. Worldwide, fewer babies die, more children go to school, more people live in democracies, more can afford simple luxuries, fewer get sick, and more live to old age.
“Better” does not mean “perfect.” Too many people still live in misery and die prematurely, and new challenges, such as climate change, confront us. But measuring the progress we’ve made in the past emboldens us to strive for more in the future. Problems that look hopeless may not be; human ingenuity can chip away at them. We will never have a perfect world, but it’s not romantic or naïve to work toward a better one.
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It also made me think about this clip I saw once on BBC Four. I listened to this man speak about the joy of statistics, and it made me want to be that joyful about my work too. :)
To the new week!
And to better, not perfect.
And to joy.
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