The World Sucks. The World is Amazing. The World can be Improved
Making the world suck less requires a mindset shift
Sometimes the news is just too much to handle. Succumbing to your doom scrolling newsfeed, it’s easy to come to the conclusion that the world is rapidly becoming a massive dumpster fire.
To counter the Endless Negative News Cycle a great organization called Our World in Data offers up continuous examples of data with fresh perspectives, that call into question negative news biases from around the globe. A good example is the death of children throughout history.
Based on data from 2020, 4.3% of all children under 15 years old die before they reach 15 years old:
This means that 5.9 million children die every year – 16,000 children on any average day, and 11 children every minute.
Clearly, a world where thousands of tragedies happen every single day is awful.
However, according to historians, approximately 50% of all children died before reaching 15 years of age, as recently as the 18th century:
Historians estimate that in the past around half of all children died before they reached the end of puberty. This was true no matter where in the world a child was born and it only started to change in the 19th century, just a few generations ago.
The safest place to bring a child into the world is the European Union (EU):
99.55% of all children born in the EU survive childhood.
If the world adopted the practices of the EU then:
Five million fewer children would die every year.
So instead of 5.9 million kids dying we could reduce it to .9 million. But isn’t it truly mind boggling that less than 3 generations ago 1/2 of all kids didn’t get to experience their 16th birthday? Tragedy of such astronomic proportions was simply part of daily life.
Now we freak out if our wifi goes down for more than five minutes.
Perspective.
If you plan on sticking around this improvable world of ours, then you may want to pay attention to some of the latest research on how to live well for the longest possible period of time: 5 Ways to Prepare for a Longer Life:
Plan to work longer and differently.
The New Map of Life paints an ideal employment picture with shorter workweeks and more flexibility to leave and return to careers, which could take some pressure off those decades in which first-world workers tend to burn the career-and-family candle at both ends.
Change how you save money.
The suggestion is that people—especially young people—base their financial plans on a shorter retirement that starts later and includes occasional paid work. In other words working for 40 years and having money for the next 30 years is no longer a viable option.
Exercise, exercise, exercise.
A moderate-intensity exercise routine—for example, 30-minute walks five times a week and muscle-strengthening activities twice a week—can mitigate common medical conditions like hypertension and high cholesterol etc.
Hang on to friends.
Loneliness represents a significant public health risk, with many studies now attributing years of life expectancy to the quality of social relationships. But maintaining a social scene doesn’t mean you need to be the life of every party. In general, people with three to five close friends report the highest levels of life satisfaction.
Envision a good longer life.
The recommendation is to think about 90- and 100-year lives now, and make plans that take advantage of those extra 30 years throughout your life. Pick up a new sport at 40, go back to school at 50, start a new career at 60.
If you are contemplating a long and hopefully a happy life then here’s a new framework for thinking about those retirement years:
Edward Jones and Age Wave’s research defined the four new stages of retirement:
Anticipation (0-10 years before retirement)
Liberation/Disorientation (0-2 years after retirement)
Reinvention (3-14 after retirement)
Reflection/Resolution (15+ years after retirement).
Each stage presents unique expectations, priorities, challenges, hopes and helpful planning for retirement.
And if, for some reason, you still are not preparing too well for this extended, smart aging future of ours, or still believe the world is going to hell in a hand-basket and so why bother — then you also may have some regrets regarding the life you’re currently living.
And while its common knowledge that regrets can be a bad thing, here’s an interesting perspective of someone who has used regrets as a type of fuel to accomplish what she always dreamed of. In 2017, when Mariko Yugeta was 58 years old, she finally achieved the athletic goal she’d had her entire life: running a marathon in under three hours.
“I don’t think the feeling of regret is a negative emotion,” Yugeta told me. “What’s negative are thoughts like, ‘I can’t run fast anymore’ or ‘I’m too old to do this,’ and I think that it’s an entirely positive way to live, to use any regrets you might have as motivation to achieve a goal.”
Finally, here’s something I recently tried that really helped me appreciate the small things in life. The idea is dead simple: imagine the thing you’re experiencing will never happen again.
A few times a day, whatever you're doing, you assume you're doing that thing for the last time. There will be a last time you sip coffee, like you're doing now. What if this sip was it? There will be a last time you walk into the office and say hi to Sally. If this was it, you might be a little more genuine, a little more present.
The point isn't to make life into a series of desperate goodbyes. You can go ahead and do the thing more or less normally. You might find, though, that when you frame it as a potential last time, you pay more attention to it, and you appreciate it for what it is in a way you normally don't. It turns out that ordinary days are full of experiences you expect will keep happening forever, and of course none of them will.
It doesn't matter if the activity is something you particularly love doing. Walking into a 7-11 or weeding the garden is just as worthy of last-time practice as hugging a loved one.
Later,
Neill