As the year winds down to find us surrounded by daily news of mankind apparently going downhill, both at home and abroad, one can easily begin to harbour feelings of despair. It’s forbidding and, it seems, unending. One way to counteract that is to pay attention to simple encounters in everyday life – some very subtle, some looming large – that come to us daily, showcasing the instances of uplift around us.
Last week, the CBS television programme ‘Sunday Morning’ carried a segment featuring a wealthy man in Kansas City, Missouri, who has taken to giving away $100,000 to random strangers at Christmas time. This year, in the wake of the problems with police/community turmoil in America, he deputized several police