The world was not a better place when I was a kid. If you ever talked to my father about his childhood, you would very quickly understand that it wasn’t a better place when he was a kid, either.
Somehow we have this negative perception of today without really seeing how our world was in the past, or what it can be right now. Our world has a great capacity for both good and evil things, and as human beings we will probably experience both many times in our lives. We will never be able to prevent all the bad things from happening, but we can choose to do better. Don’t let nostalgia, or misplaced idealism, be your excuse for inaction now. There is still love and respect, honesty and honor, caring and compassion in this world right now. Choose to reflect that, to be that, rather than the bad things, and then we can say to our friends, our children and our families, “You know, I can remember when things were still good around here. Right now.”