We humans are curious - about everything. We want to know why and how and keep seeking answers all our lives. We are also always trying to make the world a better place - for ourselves and for the ones we care much about.
I have had the fortune of experiencing two very different societies and norms and customs. Yet, I find much that is common. The language of science and mathematics remains universal and binds us all in ways that we sometimes, forget. The sentiments and emotions towards family and community is universal. Education remains the ticket to a passage for a future.
I had a teacher in Kindergarten who was determined to make sure that all the kids wrote the alphabets correctly. The idea that kids should behave and listen to the teacher and carry key lessons from home was a given. I do not remember any of my friends relishing the thought of a call (or worse a visit) from the
teacher for bad behavior. But ofcourse there were those students who did get into trouble and there were consequences.
The most precious gift I had as a child was the time to explore and learn - through reading, listening and sharing. Going to school was not a chore, but a time to connect with people my age and the opening of my mind to things I never knew existed.
Communities celebrate, different things - yet a common thread seems to be the desire to connect with each other in some way. Food seems to be the currency of choice if you will and calories have a field day.
I am at this strange age when I can reflect back and wonder as to why my parents/other adults were talking about their good old days (when I was young) and why today I am reflecting on the good old days (as my children are young). It is not as if the present is all bad - yet, why do we seem to have a unreasonable
view of all things past? It is in part, I think, a human trait to look at all the trees in the present, while only having a view of the forest in the past. The present is full of uncertainties, most of us struggle to do what we need to do and must do.
Yet, while we dwell in the past and wish for simpler things, most of us are optimistic about the future.
Things are almost certainly better today than they were a few decades ago. Not too many years ago, people died or suffered from what we would, today, Consider manageable diseases - a bacterial infection (without antibiotics), fever of unknown origins, small pox, influenza and so on. True, today people still die from such causes, but statistically we have made enormous progress. It is true that heart disease remains the number one killer today, yet imagine what it could be without statins, our understanding of blood pressure and how diet and exercise can help control the disease (if not eliminate it). None of the progress came automatically - there was someone, somewhere who was curious about
bacteria, the heart and how blood flows and why some of the pipes that carry blood seem to close up and so on. These scientists and engineers were determined to find out why and more importantly how to treat or prevent such calamities.
Modern medicine has been simply incredible. Just recently we heard that cancer deaths have continued their downward decline and I expect soon it will become a chronic disease, like diabetes. Humans are determined to control their own destiny through reasoning through the problems that beset us and finding a solution.
Paul Ehrlich was all gloom and doom about the earth's population when it was a scant 1 billion. We are all still here and thriving. Relax, it will only get better.
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