No-one Promised Us A Rose Garden!

We all arrived here with no notion of where we came from and where we were going. We had no idea where we would land. Looking around at the landscape as we became more aware, we could count ourselves pretty lucky if we were in a place where we could read and understand this story.

There are so many places in the world where most North Americans believe prospects for living the good life would be much thinner. We could define that in many different ways, and one’s attitude could differ greatly depending what one has come to believe as “good”. There are billions of people around the world who believe that the lives they lead are “good.” And not just because they were promised such by a politician.

We know that the kind of lives people lead can vary markedly from geographical place to place. We also have to know that people’s lives can differ markedly in the particular location where we are situated. We worry a lot about our particular fate. We only begin to appreciate how different these realities can be as we learn more about our own environment. As we do that, we set about, if we have any kind of aspiration, to try to ensure that we have the best possible chance to achieve a reality that will please us. We all want to live in a “rose garden”. Not all of us achieve that.

When I was eighteen, I went to Israel to study for a year.   

That year was 1952-53. I got to appreciate what life was like living in the new state absorbing hundreds of thousands of survivors from the death camps. And hundreds of thousands of Jews expelled from Arab countries where they had lived for centuries. I learned what it was like to sit down for a meal and to get up hungry as shared rations were thin for everybody. For Jews in Israel having their own state was not the promise of a “rose garden”, but a constant struggle to survive in a hostile environment. Even so, for many, it was a place that was more hospitable, and safer, than the places where they had been.

After the birth pangs of 1948, the U.N Partition Plan, internal terrorism, and an attack by seven invading armies, it would have been impossible to imagine the impressive Israel of 2023, seventy years later. From about 700,000 Jews, that population has grown to well over six million , (6.7) nearly ten million overall. In spite of the challenges it continues to face, Israel is among the leading nations creating marvels from new technology.

Some of us are fortunate enough to benefit from the help of others in ordering our lives. Most commonly such help can come from those connected to us by blood.  Sometimes, we are fortunate enough to live in a place where the general society accepts the responsibility to offer a leg up to those in their society who need such assistance.

It is a common feature of human existence that if you live in a place where assistance for those in need is not available, and you know of alternatives that you might benefit from, you might make an effort to change your place of residence to one where such assistance might be more likely to be available. Even if it only meant that there was a better chance for gainful employment; that would be enough to get you moving. Even if it only meant that the new place would be safer for you and your family; that would be enough.

So let’s talk more about “our” world. In spite of a vast improvement in our access to information from faraway places, the world we live in has become so complex that we, as individuals, cannot possibly know all of what is happening at an individual level for other humans. We rely on whatever source of information we think is reliable, data that gives us an idea of what is happening in the society as a whole.

Generally, we choose those sources for that information consistent with the thinking of the group we choose to belong to. We are the recipients of groupthink because we have neither the time, nor, often, the ability, to unravel all the conflicting data we would have to wade through. So, we often don’t have much information about life at the individual level. And, often, we don’t understand all the elements making up what it is that most people value as “good”.

Groupthink isn’t all that bad because it was that quality in humans that enabled us to attain the supremacy we have on this planet. The ability of homo sapiens to work together in large groups, benefitting from collective skills, made all the difference for us. Our secret was the ability of some members of our tribes to tell stories that others in their group could be persuaded to believe.

We didn’t get any choice about embarking on this voyage to living. As we gathered our wits about us, we, many of us, learned soon enough the complicated rules of the game. Most of us would rather have “good”, rather than “bad”; most of us would rather have a “rose garden”, rather than a less attractive alternative. The story of our lives has a lot to do with how we respond to the challenges we face. One of the most important lessons we may have to learn is that no promises have been made. We have to labor with devotion to earn any of the prizes we seek. Aren’t we incredibly fortunate just to have gotten the chance to get in the game?

What’s happening at your house?