Looking on the bright side this Christmas

Fort Rouge

Even though the world seems to be going to hell in a basket, let me assure you it is not.

If we consume a regular diet of fast-breaking news, it sure looks that way. However, if we take a broader look at where we are now, you’d see that we’ve never had it so good.

No, I’m not Pollyanna-ish. There are facts to back this up. Let us count our blessings this Christmas. We have better health-care than ever before, we are more educated than ever before, the world is connected more than ever before, infant mortality rates have never been better around the world and there is less war than we’ve ever known.

Through leaps and bounds of scientific and technological progress, the world has become a village. We have it in the palm of our hands.

There are those who want to put the genie back in the bottle, who want to return to “the good old days.” Those days when European adventurers travelled and conquered the world, discovering strange and different looking human beings and proceeded to conquer them, pillaged their treasures and returned with gifts of lands, and peoples to civilize?

Oh no, my friend, those days are gone. Humanity has evolved and people have become kinder, more empathetic and there are charitable non-profit organizations in the world championing the cause of every need. As a civilization, we are leaving the unruly ways of teenagers and entering the stage of human maturity. We must go through the stages of development just like a child. A mature person cannot return to adolescence. We cannot resist changes and, frightening though it may be, we must go with the flow. We are here to create an ever-advancing civilization. There will be setbacks on this journey, but these will act as launching pads to a better, unified world.

Today people are choosing to live more than the proverbial 40 miles from where they were born, they are choosing to plant roots and create history wherever they wish on this vast planet, which is our home and belongs to us all. Africans, Spaniards, Europeans, Indigenous peoples, Chinese, South Asians… all of us are living all over world and the world is becoming a beautiful, colourful human garden, as was intended. Unity and diversity are the strength and secret sauce of the world. We cannot go back. We are too entangled with each other.

The principle “out of many one” is what makes America great. Its strength is in its diversity but because of fear, some want to change that. That may well spell the beginning of the end of America, but the world will still go on because everyone will have a seat at the table. The new generation will insist on that. The world in which our children are growing up is the future world, it’s a multicultural world and we celebrate our differences because that is what makes us strong – spiritually, physically and emotionally.

What if this Christmas we remain upbeat and filled with gratitude for all the blessings in our lives, our society, our village and forget what is not there. We live in an abundant universe. Life is short so we must make it count.

So, this Christmas lets us celebrate, let us feel the love, the promised peace and harmony of the season. Happy holidays.