Call Me Mr. Pollyanna: America Is Still a Land of Hope

Commentary

In a recent phone conversation about his latest book, “What Really Matters,” Tim Goeglein mentioned that he was “a bottomless optimist” and that he believed “we are already in the early chapters of a quiet restoration in the United States.” I wholeheartedly concur.

Let me explain.

Seven years ago, I began writing feature articles for The Epoch Times. When the 2020 election fracas and the COVID-19 shutdowns slammed into the country, my editors told me that I could mention negative circumstances at the beginning of an article, but it must always end on a positive note. In those dire times, the editors explained, readers needed inspiration, information, and hope. An editor at another publication told me the same thing. After several years of writing those articles, I found it became nigh on impossible for me to end a piece with a negative message. Jokingly, I began to refer to myself among friends and family members as the “Pollyanna of journalism.”

While Pollyanna is today a derogatory label for an overly optimistic person—“She’s such a Pollyanna, always refusing to see reality”—the novel that coined the term featured an orphaned girl who insisted on playing “the Glad Game,” a philosophy her father taught her. In this game, one has to look for some point of light even when everything seems black as night. It was a bestseller a century ago and was read and adored by adults as well as children.

But my own well of optimism was fed by the springs of people I interviewed for the paper and by the other subjects I wrote about. In interview after interview, I encountered those many people who don’t make the headlines but who are working hard to buttress American families, schools, and communities. There was the founder of “Block Party USA,” the famous author who cared more about his Haitian orphanage than any discussion of his books, the woman who gave a sandwich to a homeless man and who 20 years later had created a network of shelters and homes for the poor, the woman who tenderly cared for her dying husband, another who did so for her husband with Parkinson’s, and dozens of others. I never—and I mean never—left the phone after these interviews without feeling awed by these people and overjoyed by their deeds.

Adding to these stories were the many, many other articles I’ve written about the great men and women who lived and died building our country and preserving its traditions of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Although I majored in history many years ago, and although I’ve read histories and biographies all my life, these past seven years provided a graduate school education in the story of our country. Politicians and poets, soldiers and slaves, presidential wives and mothers of presidents—I’ve written columns on several hundred figures and events that still echo down from the past and into our present.

As a proud subscriber to the print edition of The Epoch Times, I have also noted this same positive approach to our troubled world. Sections such as Life & Tradition, Arts & Culture, Mind & Body, and Home offer advice for self-enhancement and community improvement in all sorts of ways. Even the news and opinion sections push hard to deliver fair assessments of politics and culture rather than present, as some media outlets do, a bleak perspective on events and personalities.

Finally, while I have good friends on the right who believe our country is going down the tubes, my reply to them is always the same: “I have children and grandchildren. I can’t afford your pessimism.” Despair is the mother of defeat.

Add all these factors together, and in that summing up you’ll find Mr. Pollyanna, at least insofar as the fate of America is concerned. The “quiet restoration” Goeglein brought up is real and true and ongoing. I’ve witnessed it firsthand time and again. And all of us, if we have the eyes to see and the ears to hear, can detect this trend as well in our neighbors and in our families.

Back in 2019, in one of the first pieces I wrote for the paper, I reviewed Wilfred McClay’s recently released history text for high schoolers and for general use, “Land of Hope: An Invitation to the Great American Story.” McClay concludes his introduction to his book with his desire that it will “remind us of how remarkable were the achievements of those who came before us, how much we are indebted to them.”

Those remarkable people are still among us. In fact, they are all of those Americans who build rather than destroy, who love rather than hate, who marry and make babies and raise them to be grown-ups, who dream and work and strive to become better.

That’s the American way. Those are the people, living and dead, we’ll be celebrating in July at our 250th birthday party. Let’s honor that occasion by adding our own candles of aspiration and achievement to the millions already lighting up that cake.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.