Find the Good…
I have a hoodie that says “Find the Good.” I remember seeing it online and thinking, That’s a great reminder. I should really wear that.
The problem is I seem to have forgotten to actually do it. Find the good, that is, I wear the hoodie all the time.
This should not come as a shock to anyone who knows me. I am not exactly Mr. Sunshine. I tend to see the bad. Everywhere. All the time.
The newspaper is full of suicide, murder, fraud, corruption, war, and all the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. I see stories about parents brawling at children’s sporting events, fights at kindergarten graduations (yes, apparently we have those now), and seemingly endless violence in my city.
My default setting is, “Why can’t everyone just get along? Why is everyone so aggro?”
The problem is that living that way is exhausting. It makes me miserable, and I suspect it makes me less enjoyable to be around. That creates its own little cycle. I see the bad, I feel bad, people avoid the person who is always seeing the bad, and then I have another reason to think the world is terrible.
So I’ve decided this summer will be the Summer of Finding the Good.
I know what some of my longtime readers are saying:
“Wait a minute. Didn’t you already have a ‘Something Good Every Day’ category?”
Yes. Yes, I did.
Let’s call this a recommitment.
I may not write about it every day, but I am going to look for it every day.
Case in point: last night I volunteered at a soup kitchen. And by soup kitchen, I mean an actual soup kitchen. There was actual soup. It felt like a detail worth mentioning.
My job was handing out bread to around 150 people who came for dinner. It was hard to see. There were people who were homeless, struggling with poverty, battling mental illness, and a few who looked like they walked out of a Jim Carroll story (if you get that reference).
I came home saddened by the reality that so many people in my own community are suffering. I’ve volunteered at food pantries and soup kitchens before, so I’m not sure why it hit me so hard this time. Maybe I’m just tired of seeing so much evidence that the world can be cruel.
But my wife, who has the unfair advantage of being an optimist, gently pointed out something I completely missed.
I was focusing on the 150 people who needed a meal. I was ignoring the fact that a church group was there twice a week, making sure they got one.
I was focusing on the struggles. I was ignoring the twenty volunteers who gave up their evening to help strangers.
The suffering was real. But so was the kindness.
She pointed out something similar when I mentioned problems a friend had recently shared with me. I focused on the fact that those things happened. She focused on the fact that they overcame them.
And the funny thing is, I used to be good at this. In fact, I used to think it was one of my greatest strengths.
A bad post-college relationship ended? It led me to move home, go to law school, and put me on the path that led to the life I have now.
Leaving a job rather than accepting a temporary demotion? It led me to start my own business, spend more time with my kids when they were young, and allowed my wife to pursue her own goals.
Somewhere over the last few years, I lost that ability.
I’ve had a pretty easy life, and when some larger challenges came along, they pierced the bubble I had been living in. Since then, I feel like I’ve been standing guard, scanning the horizon for the next disaster.
It is exhausting.
So this summer, I’m going back to something I used to know.
The world is not all good. It never has been. History is basically a very long record of humans doing terrible things to one another. But history is also a record of humans feeding strangers, caring for the sick, creating art, raising children, loving each other, and getting up every day to try again.
As I sit here writing this, I can see the sky darkening and the rain beginning to fall, literally
The Summer of Finding the Good guy is going to think about the grass, the flowers, the trees, and every living thing that needs that rain.
I will find the good.