The world is good, actually

Yes, even Toronto.

Outside Toronto’s Union Station.

I chaperoned my first school trip on Tuesday. A few weeks ago, when I found out my wife was taking her class to see a musical version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory at the Young People’s Theatre in Toronto, I immediately asked if I could join, and if our three-and-a-half-year-old daughter, Ada, could join as well. The answer was a resounding yes and I was instructed that I’d be “in charge” of the two boys who’d be attending.

A view from our seats.

I won’t bore you with a chronological assessment of our day’s itinerary, but it’s worth noting, for the purposes of this post, that two teachers, myself, our daughter, and eight children aged 9-12 got to Toronto by taking the commuter train from Guelph. Once we got downtown, we had the children navigate the group to St. James Park, where we’d play on the incredible play structures on the grounds behind the church before heading to the show. The children then navigated us to the theatre, where we had lunch before enjoying the musical. Afterwards, the children navigated us back to Union Station and located the platform from where our train would leave to take us back home.

St. James Park playground.

Now that you have our day in context, and now that I’ve had a night to reflect on our trip, I felt compelled to write about how good the world is.

As you can imagine, travelling with that many pre-teens at peak commuting hours can be hectic. This was especially true on the way home, when the train was so full, our group had to split up and some of us had to stand. At every stage of this trip, everyone around us was accommodating. No eye rolls, no visible frustration from having rambunctious kids around, no pushing through our slow-moving group. People were happily offering their seats to us and, at times, helping to corral kids (namely my daughter) when they strayed too far from the pack. We didn’t ask, people just did it. And being that we were in Toronto, the diversity of people around us was about as plentiful as any place on God’s green Earth; yet we all shared common values with respect to being patient, and even helpful, when it came to children in public spaces.

The day wasn’t without its challenges. I’m not trying to suggest that the world we inhabit is sinless and always good. Aggressive homeless men shouting profanities in close proximity to the children, human feces on a mailbox, alcohol and drug paraphernalia strewn about, the nearly ever-present scent of marijuana, and large encampments no more than thirty yards from the idyllic park we spent hours playing at. And those problems don’t even scratch the surface of the economic and spiritual problems every day working people face. Our cities and our country have their problems. Big, important problems that are getting worse by many objective variables, and have resulted in my wife and I bantering around the idea of moving far away from it all. It’s not that I don’t notice those things, it’s just that the majority of the people we interacted with in our day – passively and expressly – were fine people.

My impression of our day in the big city was in sharp contrast to the day’s affairs I got caught up on whilst I scrolled my phone later that evening. According to my various timelines, things are bad out there, folks. Cities are shitholes, public spaces are overrun with vagrants, and inside every fast food restaurant are young men waiting to fight the first person who looks at them sideways.

The world I see on the news and on social media is nothing more than a battlefield for narratives and it shares so little in common with reality. Conversely, the world I see in reality is mostly kind and it shares so little in common with the news and social media.

I suppose this contrast has always existed, hasn’t it? There’s a Chicken Little, ‘blackpilled’ version of our world where the sky is always falling, and then there’s the real world where each day, the sun rises, birds chirp, and people smile.

I’ve come to the conclusion that – thanks in large part to my naturally optimistic disposition – I am able to see good where those without such a disposition cannot. So perhaps I am biased. There’s also the fact that I am raising a daughter in this world and because I want her to have a hopeful and good vision of this world for as long as possible, I go out of my way to pitch that world to her. Again, another glaring bias. Maybe I’m gaslighting myself. Maybe I’m delusional. So be it. We all have imagined worlds in our head.

All I know is that when the screen on my phone goes black and I walk out my front door, the world is good, actually.

Thank God for that.

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