11 Things We (Mostly) Don’t Have to Worry About Anymore
According to a recent Pew Research Center survey, only 37% of Americans believe life is better now than it was 50 years ago, and this poll was conducted five years ago. I understand why some might feel like things are getting worse, but by most indicators of good or bad state of life in general, life gets better if you pull back the focus more than a few years.
We are idealists and do not know how to look into the distance. Instead, we tend to compare our current situation to an ideal rather than compare it to the past. We have also made such steady progress over the past centuries that any halt or recession may seem like more of a setback than it might seem in the broader context.
While I’m not discounting the major issues facing our country and the world, it doesn’t hurt to try and get some perspective by looking at all the things – both big and small – that we no longer need to worry about. Here are 11 of them, but there are thousands more.