Ordinary Abundance is a website that takes you through an apartment, rather brilliantly, demonstrating the astounding technological advances we enjoy today.
It’s very much worth a look. It’s a beautiful, clever reminder of how fortunate we are to be alive today.
I spend much of my life trying to assure people that these are not the worst of times.
It’s hard work.
Human beings can’t help but assume the moment they are living in is somehow more perilous, difficult, and pivotal than any time before, and this sense of doom and gloom makes it hard to be happy, positive, and hopeful about the future.
Doom and gloom isn’t the best recipe for joy.
Even when I remind them that in 1980, inflation was 15% and interest rates were 21%, they find an excuse to explain away that difficult economic time in America.
When I point out the realities of World War II, the Great Depression, or the Civil War, they somehow see these times as more perilous and frightening.
When I remind them that if you were a black American alive before 1865, you were likely enslaved. Forced to endure hard labor without pay. Subject to assault, rape, and murder without any legal protections. Separated forever from children and other family members at the whim of your subjugator.
And after 1865, if you were black and living in the South, you suffered under Jim Crow, forced into segregated schools and public spaces, denied voting rights, and subjected to systemized inequality enforced through intimidation, violence, and murder.
Even with these reminders of the past. they still can’t see their good fortune.
When I tell them in that in 1970, my father was drafted and sent to Vietnam to fight in a war predicated, in part, on a false flag operation and forced to risk his life and kill other human beings, only to retun to a country that did not honor him like previous veterans of war, and found himself in a land of soaring gas prices, gas shortages, duble digit inflation, double digit interest rates, unemployment rates that were double today’s rate, and crime rates that make today’s look like child’s play, they say, “Yeah, but…”
People can’t help but be drawn to the idea that today’s challenges are far worse than those of the past.
And I get it. We have serious problems today. Many Americans are struggling mightily. Life is hard for many people.
But it wasn’t so long ago that I was living in poverty, absent any safety net, homeless, facing trial for a crime I did not commit, and feeling hopeless about my future.
I know what a difficult life is like.
But I never thought I was living in a time worse than the Great Depression, the Civil War, or the 18 years from 1978 to 1996 when the Yankees didn’t win a single World Series championship.
A little perspective goes a long, long way.
So I’ll keep trying to convince people that yes, we have serious problems today, and yes, many Americans are struggling mightily, but also, today’s world is so much better than previous times in American history.
Indoor plumbing. Electricity. Refrigeration. Anesthesia. Antibiotics. Vaccines. Commercial jets.
All things that did not exist just a few generations ago.
So many more.
So check out Ordinary Abundance. A simple walk around a modern apartment can reveal surprising things about the good fortune we enjoy today.
