I think we can all agree that this year started off far more poorly than we were hoping for. And I know that’s an understatement, but anyone who has been aware of the state of things around the world knows what the hell I’m talking about. We don’t need to rehash everything that’s happened. You know, I know. Now, let’s move on.

Even though the garbage fire that was January 2020 is still wafting in the February air (and in some parts of the world literally still burning), we must remember to keep pushing through and not let the negative affect us to the point of giving up or even slowing down. It may feel like things are only getting worse as time goes on, but we are just on the wrong side of the ever swinging pendulum that represents the ebb and flow of humanity. We survived WWI and WWII, the Great Depression, the Black Plague and Polio, and the style choices of the 80s, which gives me full confidence that we will pull together and come out stronger in the wake of these recent disasters and political tensions.

What we need right now is faith (and love, sweet, love), not just in a higher power but in ourselves. We need to come together as people, knowing that we all want to live in a world where our children and their children can grow up safe, where we can go to work or school and come back home to live happy, healthy lives. But we also need to trust the people around us. As disease spreads in another country, we need to trust the many systems and regulations put in place by our governments to keep us safe from contagion. We need to believe that other countries want to rage war just as little as we do, that every country’s number one priority is keeping their people safe.

Without putting faith in other people, especially ones outside our inner circle, we will find ourselves lost in a panic-fueled state of mind, flinching at every news report and wondering if this is what will set off the apocalypse. In just the first month of this year, I’ve had to talk to many of my students about this idea, especially when the seniors would ask if they were going to be drafted, the girls would ask if koalas were going to go extinct, and the middle schoolers would ask how long it would take for the Coronavirus to kill them. I can only imagine the terror these young people must be feeling, especially when hearing adults on the news, in their home, and at school talking as though we are in the end times.

The only thing people my age have to compare this type of fear to is 9/11, and while the horror of that caused my seven-year-old mind to fear planes, tall buildings, and people who shouted “death to America” for a long time, my fear and anxiety was lessened by the fact that we all came together as a nation. While we did have fear-mongers, conspiracy theorists, and other anxiety-fodder outlets, they were mostly limited to Fox News and strange websites that I have never visited. As a whole, we supported each other, but comparing directly to today, we also didn’t have access to every single person’s thoughts and opinions about the state of the world.

I could go into all the social media garbage that our young people (and older people) are being exposed to, but we all know this. If you don’t, then ask yourself why people are so nervous all the time and you’ll find your answer. Instead, I want to end this post by suggesting a few things that will help us through this garbage fire of a year:

• If you live in an area that it is safe to go outside, do so. Spend more time appreciating the world around you rather than living in fear that you are going to lose the things that you don’t really appreciate right now anyway.
• Get off of social media or at least limit your usage of it. Also, take every post on social media with a grain of salt. Just because Greg, that weird dude from your high school, is saying that WWIII is about to happen, doesn’t mean you need to believe it.
• Get your Goddamn flu shot. The Coronavirus isn’t going to kill you, but the flu just might. And fight against anti-vaxxers because they are the greatest threat to the spread of plague in this country right now.
• Be at peace knowing that even if our leaders are total crackpots, there are thousands of people working their asses off every day to make sure we are healthy and safe.
• And speaking of leaders, if your part of half of the country that didn’t vote in 2016, you better get your lazy-ass to the polls this year. Don’t give me that my-vote-doesn’t-matter crap, because that is just Greg talking, and we all know how weird that dude is.
• Lastly, read more books, educate yourself, and don’t let anyone tell you how or what to think. You get to decided how you view the world around you. Don’t let others distract you from living a good life.