I hate this about us

I conduct an experiment and continue to remind myself of our essential goodness as demonstrated through Halloween

Because of rain and high winds in the forecast, our town moved trick-or-treating to the night before Halloween instead of today. Last night, I lay on the couch in our kitchen, reading and listening to the sound of children trick or treating. The echo of their voices and laughter up and down the streets. Our friends who were riding around in a golf cart, beeping their horn and passing out caramel corn.

Yes, I was laying on my couch and not giving out candy, but I have no doubt those kids finished the night with full and heavy bags. Downtown Madison is pretty good trick-or-treating territory. My next-door-neighbor always sits out front. Other people get dressed up in fairly elaborate costumes to hand out candy. And downtowners pass out a lot of candy. Multiple bags of candy on a good year, which is not cheap. But they do it, year after year.

It's normal. It’s routine. On Halloween, we buy candy and give it away for free to children, most of whom we do not know. No big deal, except when you take a minute to think about it, it’s also sort of amazing. No one forces people to hand out candy. This is clearly true, as I chose not to give out candy and no Halloween police showed up at my door (yet). But so many other people opted in. Voluntarily. Gladly. With great joy. And the worse thing that happens is some grumbling about kids being “too old” to trick or treat. (1)

This is all routine. It’s also a miracle. It is both things.

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This week I listened to an interview with the amazing Krista Tippett, host of my favorite podcast, On Being. She talked about strategies for surviving in what are verifiably trying times. She also reminded me of one of those things that it’s clear I need to be reminded of over and over again—bad things are news because they are rare.

“Halloween goes off without a hitch; children get free candy from strangers.” We’re unlikely to ever see this as a headline. Or as clickbait out there on the internet. Or an e-mail in your inbox from The New York Times. What makes news is what’s rare and the absolute beauty that is Halloween with its distribution of shit-tons of free candy isn’t rare. It happens every year. The only way Halloween would make the headlines is if there was a bloody massacre that night, which given the whole spookiness, you’d think would happen more often, but does not.

Photo by Paige Cody on Unsplash

What makes the news is the out-of-the ordinary stuff. Fraud. Stealing. Cheating. Assault. Murder. Hatred. We all know, if it bleeds it leads. What we forget is why this axiom is true. Those things make headlines because they DON’T HAPPEN VERY OFTEN.

I’m going to sound repetitive, but I think this is a thing that bears repeating, especially in this world and this moment. Violence is rare. Strangers being mean to each other? Also pretty rare.

People giving free candy to children? A yearly event. Routine. No big deal.

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I promised you an experiment, so here it is. The title of this post has the word ‘hate’ in it. I think there’s a good chance that because it has the word ‘hate’ in it, more people will read it. One of the most popular essays I’ve written here also has the word ‘hate’ in it—“Does everybody hate their job now?”

We probably all understand at this point that negative headlines or posts get more attention than positive ones. As Krista Tippett also said in that interview, as humans we are exquisitely hard-wired to detect danger. That danger was often synonymous with the thing that was out-of-place or rare. We are obsessed with the novel because it kept us safe. It worked out well for us until now, when it means we have to fight an epic battle of will to keep ourselves from opening that e-mail that promises to spell out in great and well-researched detail exactly how doomed we are.

This is what I hate about us, though hate is too strong a word, really. This is what makes me sad about us. We allow ourselves over and over again to be convinced that the world is a horrible place, despite the evidence to the contrary that is right there in front of us. I have no doubt that the online world makes this an easier task. The experience of picking up a newspaper and reading through the headlines once or twice a day is very different from the barrage of bad news that flows into our lives through our screens today.

But nothing in the actual world has changed. On a day-to-day level, the good still mostly outweighs the bad. I believe this is true even in this election season, where things in the U.S. feel as bad as they could possibly be. It didn’t stop kids from trick-or-treating. It didn’t stop people from giving away free candy.

Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash

It doesn’t stop the innumerable ways on a daily basis that we are kind and take care of each other. A student in my class finds a cell phone on the floor and we all make sure it gets back to the person it belongs to. In the World Series, two teams are determined to beat each other and yet, when a hitter gets on base, without fail, he smiles and jokes and greets the first baseman. We stop at stop signs. We stop and chat. We gather together to eat. We let the person at the grocery store with fewer items go ahead of us. We wait in line after line. We step out of the way. We open the door for that person on crutches. We follow a thousand tiny rules that are all about allowing us to peaceably live together. We don’t have to, but we do. We give candy away to strangers.

I am trying very hard to pay more attention to these things—these daily graces. But even so, it’s hard sometimes. It was hard to make that list. It shouldn’t be. The stream of ugliness is like a constant darkness working to snuff out all that light. I am trying so hard to pay attention to the light.

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Right, but so what if people give away candy for free once a year? What does that have to do with the xenophobia that is running rampant around the globe? Or the climate change that is part of why we’re having high winds and thunderstorms in late October? Or the slow-motion collapse of almost every institution—like democracy—we’ve come to rely on?

It is true that we are a world in crisis. It is also true that there is so much goodness. Both of these things are true. What’s more, it’s very hard to take concrete action about any of those crises if you don’t have faith in goodness. It’s absolutely possible to build a social movement around revenge and hate. We’ve certainly seen plenty of that. I don’t think it’s sustainable in the long run. I also don’t think it feels particularly good on a cellular level as human beings.

There are so many people who have had much less reason to believe in the goodness of humanity than me and, yet, still did. Desmond Tutu. John Lewis. James Baldwin. The Dalai Lama. Mary Oliver. Toni Morrison.

If you believe the nonstop barrage of ugliness that comes through your inbox and your feed, there is no point in taking action. There is no hope. We’re lost. We’re doomed. We suck. We might as well throw in the towel and give up the ghost.

But if you concentrate very hard on looking for goodness, maybe there’s still hope. Maybe the powers that be are working hard to convince us that everything is crap. Maybe, just maybe, we won’t allow ourselves to be fooled.

P.S. Do I write about the same basic topic, that people are good and the world isn’t as bad as we think it is, over and over again? Yes, probably. Does that bother me? No. I am writing to remind myself of this truth. I need to be reminded a lot. I am a better person when I remember this. Maybe you need to be reminded, too. Maybe not. Whatever.

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