By Jim Heavey
As an Eagle Scout, I still struggle the hardest with one particular point of the Scout Law: A Scout is cheerful. I wrote this piece mainly as a reminder to myself, but I’m sharing it here.
I realize that you don’t have to look far these days to find examples of negativity and incivility. Local, national, or international, it seems the news media is an endless stream of intractable problems, dispiriting stories, and blame-casting. Once-thoughtful editorial pages now resemble social media flame wars. People fill the streets, often to agitate and sometimes causing even more discord and injury and material damage. Entertainment, workplaces, and even faith services have morphed into sanctimonious moral scoldings. Everywhere you turn, people seem to have an endless supply of negative energy, and they’re not afraid to use it.
But here’s a startling concept: Negativity is a choice. Those of us who grew up a while back were taught simple rules for civil society, and one of them was this little ditty: When you’ve thought it over twice, and you can’t say something nice, then don’t say anything at all. The media could choose to highlight the positive. Letter-writers could elect to praise and encourage. Entertainers and corporate CEOs could refrain from wading into divisive politics and instead highlight what we have in common.
It is lately hailed as a patriotic duty to vaccinate yourself against the COVID pandemic; my challenge is to consider it a civic duty to vaccinate yourself against the negativity pandemic. Here’s how:
1. Recognize—and be grateful for the fact—that Greenwich remains an above-average town, and you are privileged to live here. It’s all too easy to overlook the gifts on your plate and instead see only the problems, but the truth is that we abide in a unique, beautiful, peaceful, prosperous, safe, and orderly town. See a problem? Step up and donate your time, treasure or talent to help fix it.
2. Get away from screens. Our interconnectedness is a technological wonder and has the potential for endless good and union. But it is all-too-often seized upon by those who would pump dissatisfaction, division, and despair into society. Turn off the news. Take a social media break. Get outside—it’s springtime! Talk to your neighbors, have a meal at a sidewalk eatery, plant flowers, hike in one of our stunning nature preserves.
3. Bring back the once-sacred social rule: No politics in public. The next time you feel the urge to disparage a public figure, policy, or belief system in any forum that isn’t explicitly political, please keep it to yourself. This one step alone would probably do more to restore our civility and unity than any other.
4. Worship. Go back to church, temple, or wherever you go to connect with God. Remember that God made every single one of us for a reason and that none of us is more important than any other, and a whole world of civility will flow from this one realization. Treat others as you wish to be treated.
5. Be the bee, not the fly. Flies feast on excrement and carrion, whereas bees seek out flowers and sweetness. Honor yourself by refusing to spend your time wallowing in negativity, but instead seek out the timeless positives: Truth, Beauty, Love, and Joy. Your soul will thank you.
