Even these unusual times are comparatively good

I recently had one of those annual medical examinations. While waiting for the doctor, I was required to provide answers on a questionnaire. “Have you ever had this or that medical issue?” Finally, the questionnaire posed a set of state-of-mind questions ending with, “Are you happy with your life?” I answered, yes, I am happy with my life. The doctor looked at the questionnaire and remarked, “We don’t see many people like you.”

My satisfaction with my life is not because of great achievements; I am in the ordinary category. It is because I am privileged. I am privileged to live in an era that is vastly different from all of human history. Diseases have ravished humans until recently, until modern medical science brought some relief. During the Middle Ages in Europe, about half of the children died from diseases before their 13th birthday. As recently as 1900, more than 40 percent of Americans died of infectious disease. Malaria is estimated to have killed almost half of all the people who have ever lived. Smallpox, a brutal disease, was eradicated by vaccination. The last case occurred in 1977. During its final 100 years, smallpox killed an estimated 500 million people. In the U.S., we now have vaccines for 26 diseases. Fifteen vaccines are routinely administered to children. One year when I was in high school, 50 thousand American children were paralyzed by polio. Now, polio is preventable by vaccination.

Starvation has too often cursed humanity, but it has not been a problem in the United States during my lifetime. Modern technology enables food production, preservation, and distribution sufficient to feed billions of people.

During the past century or a little longer, work has advanced from harsh, exhausting, long hours, and sometimes dangerous conditions to something a lot more pleasant—for most jobs. Child labor has been outlawed in the U.S. since 1938.

War has been a constant in human history, but there has been no war in the United States during my lifetime. The attack at Pearl Harbor occurred before Hawaii became a state. 

The modern inventions and engineering developments are amazing, and some of them are best appreciated by those of us who can remember an earlier age or have heard stories related by older people. What was laundry day like before electricity and laundry machines? Travel before automobiles and airplanes could be described as work.

Not everyone on this planet is as fortunate as we are in the United States. Not everyone in the United States is as fortunate as I am. We still have problems, but we also have a lot of smart people who can solve problems. The future can be even better than the current good life.

Compared to all previous human history, “the livin’ is easy,” as Ella Fitzgerald expressed it in song.