It is a different feeling to actually go through difficulty. Reading about the 1930s Depression or watching movies that tell stories of a great crisis and how the human spirit rose up to the occasion and emerged stronger—battle scarred, but better—after it fought back, is very different from facing real danger. It is another thing to actually collectively go through such a crisis. It may not seem so when we plug into the social media groups or even the family and college WhatsApp groups—but the world has actually become a much better place than ever before. Swedish physician, academic, and public speaker Hans Rosling documents this beautifully in his epic book Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About the World—and Why Things Are Better Than You Think. And it took the pandemic for us to discover this.
