I came across a sentence in a small work by Anna Quindlin that states, “I learned to look at all the good in the world.” I immediately realized that she was saying something important to me.  I have been spending my time looking at all the bad things in the world around me.  I have been railing about the wrongs and imperfections that my study of utopia pushes me to combat.  But, do you know what? It is so much easier to complain than to shout “Hallelujah!” For some reason I am constitutionally holding back while others are bleating “Hosanna!” because of the drag effect of all the negatives that I see in stark contrast.  Well, I guess that is just me.

I think there is a defect in our society that is managed by the owners of an unjaundiced eye who propose solutions that gloss over the remaining defects that MY eye ferrets out.  These Pollyanna’s, for that is what they are, are - like the Macawbers of the world - seeing only the positive side of things.  But that is not what Quindlin is saying.  She was magnificent when writing her biting columns in the Op-ed section of the NY Times. She ripped off the covering fluff the lying political whores laid down to obscure their self-serving and punishing proposals intended to protect their interests and harm the defenseless. She also stepped away from her job of defending AGAINST the harmful practices of those in power.  She never to my memory attacked gratuitously the despoilers of what are good and “enough”. Anna Quindlin reached me by simply saying that she learned to “look at all the good in the world.”  I think that she had stopped thinking of the glass half empty.  The glass half full was good enough after a time.

I would like to dwell on “good” for a time.  It will be hard for it seems so insipid when so many targets of “bad” exist.  These bad targets are out there working so hard to tear down, destroy and to involve a great many innocent people by using the innocents as their tools.  Do you see how hard it is to relinquish the fight?

For a while, when I was learning how to make my essays fit into one page instead of going on and on, I tried to write about certain outstanding local individuals that no one heard of or no one but me thought them important enough to celebrate.  I wrote and tried to get my students to find the “LOCALLY NOTABLE” people who had influenced them and were a force for “good” in their neighborhoods.  I only now realize that I was asking them and myself to find the “Mr. Rodgers” who quietly influenced them and spread good all around.

I have learned to look at all the good in the world but find it hard not to attack the monsters living among us who live and work to tear it down.