Murder. Chaos. Strife.
Media outlets that glorify violence and pander to the lowest common denominator.
An entertainment industry that churns out garbage with little regard to what it’s doing to our young people and their developing brains.
It’s amazing we all get out of bed in the morning instead of covering ourselves in Styrofoam and rocking silently back and forth in a corner.
However, far from succumbing to all of this mind-numbing negativity, lately I’ve been trying to re-orient my focus. Maybe the goodness is all around us and we’re just not noticing it, consumed as we are by the pervasive and soul-sucking pessimism in the media and social media universes.
That goodness is on exhibit when Rockford opens a game-changing downtown indoor sports center to rave reviews, overcoming the naysayers who spent years saying “don’t build it.”
It’s present when the new Rockford police chief understands he can’t tackle crime by himself and where he expects that we will solve this challenge together.
That goodness is also found at Rockford University, where the outgoing president is being rightly celebrated for leading the institution in a remarkable eight-year turnaround and back to its rightful place as a national leader in education.
And it’s on the Blue Line and Red Line one night to and from Soldier Field for an international soccer game, watching young men offer their seats to women and children, and blasting aside -- if just for a minute -- the view that our youth are only in it for themselves.
So often these days, we can find ourselves caught up in a churning sea of hopelessness and cynicism, desperate for a lifeline. I would argue that the lifeline is already there. We just need to grab it.
I’m Wester Wuori, and that’s my Perspective.
