As a first “real” post, I thought I’d take a few moments to write about why I chose to call this site “Everything Is Going To Be OK.”
The first and probably most obvious thing to make clear is that, of course, everything isn’t actually going to be OK. That is, anyone with the dimmest awareness of current and historic world events knows that bad things are happening around us all the time. Aside from the Big Things – anthropogenic climate change, war, the global rise of right-wing populism and authoritarianism – a defining theme of adulthood is encountering, with increasing frequency, those nasty situations for which there is no perfect solution: hurt and damage caused that no apology or quick fix can undo; illness that no simple course of antibiotics can cure.
Despite this reality, or perhaps because of it, optimism and positivity can be a tremendous force for good. I’m a huge fan of The Hold Steady and I’ve written elsewhere about how the positivity of The Carpentries community is a major part of what motivates me to be involved in that project. The common theme between those two things – the world’s greatest bar rock band and the world’s greatest project teaching computing skills to researchers – is the community that surrounds them and the attitude that members of those communities adopt towards one another.
At a time when much of public and online discourse is negative and divisive, and events in our personal lives can make it difficult to cope, a simple statement of reassurance can make all the difference. I’ve seen first-hand that a positive attitude can make the difference between overcoming a challenge and being overwhelmed by it. Try to be the positive, encouraging voice that bolsters those around you.
When I wrote “Everything is going to be OK” on the whiteboard in our office, my boss added a second sentence: “But not on its own,” and (wie sonst auch) he’s right. Humans are capable of amazing, inspiring things. We can fix the problems that we face, even though those problems were also usually created by us, but it’s going to take some work. Let’s do that work together: no-one else is going to do it for us.
We are our only saviors; we’re gonna build something this summer.