To feel a bit sort of scared about everything

[Isitjustmetheniwonder]

Regarding the world at the moment and the future? The costs of everything, the situation for my Dd in the future and us in old age. It used to be that if you worked hard, you were ok, now we just work and work with not much reward.
We live abroad and the U.K. was always our safe place to return home to if anything happened, now I just keep hearing how terrible everything is
I’m usually a happy, positive person, since covid it all seems to have changed, this fear feeling about the future is quite strong though.
Anyone have any positivity about the future they can share??

I'm the same OP. I don't recognise the country of my birth. It has changed horribly and has got much worse since the internet.

On a positive note, global birth rates are decreasing rapidly so hopefully humans will have died out in about 5 or 600 years.

@Isitjustmetheniwonder i live abroad to, always thinking about perhaps going back at some point, now I don’t know with all the problems there.

I agree op, I have 1 DD & I look at her sometimes & think ‘what will your future be like’. I used to live in such a happy, sunshine & rainbows world of my own, loved everything about the U.K. & life & now I just think it’s pretty grim & I think worst is to come.

I try and feel more positive by thinking my kids could live somewhere else when they’re adults. But I can’t think of one place on earth now that seems a great place to live. Everywhere has problems or future problems due to climate change. It’s things like that that make me feel like everything is fruitless. No wonder they’re trying to get to Mars.

No I don't agree

@Touty It’s pretty bad everywhere, but that was always the place I thought we could at least go back to to make more money and settle down. People used to say jokingly ‘Oh you’d be nuts to come back to this weather’ but not mean much by it, but now most are saying they’d get out if they could 🥺that was never said before

@Busephalus Reasons why and some positivity perhaps 🙏it’s much needed

I can't promise you it will all be ok but I am a lot older than you and can promise you it has felt like this many times before.
I'm old enough to remember, as a young teen, only having electricity at set times of the week, then the Winter of Discontent and so on - each time it has bounced back and, hopefully, it will again. I think the big difference is that we now have social media and a media that love to terrify us.
No-one knows what the future holds and I worry for my grandchildren but I think we just have to stay as positive as we can, do as much good as we can in our own ways and hope.

I think as people age they do tend to think like this.

Also my parents almost didn't have kids because of the threat of nuclear war .... we have all lived with that threat fine for 50 odd years since then.

I think the internet and rolling 24 hour news makes everything worse. I remember the three day week, electricity blackouts, bodies not being buried and the army having to stand in for the striking firemen. There was also the threat of nuclear annihilation, the riots in Toxteth and Brixton, acid rain, Chernobyl.

Yes the world has some challenges which weren't around then most particularly climate change but there was the hole in the ozone layer.

Hundreds of years ago horrible things were happening all through the world but most people didn't know what was going on, sometimes even beyond their own village.

I find that I need to step away from the news and social media sometimes as I become much more anxious if I spend too much time looking at them.

It is normal to worry about what our children will face and I'm not advocating burying one's head in the sand but I am not sure that things are objectively worse now than in years gone by.

I'd rather be alive now than the middle ages

I fully agree. And while the UK may not be putting its best face forward at the moment it’s still one of the best countries to live in in the world. I say this on the basis of having lived in 16 countries across 3 continents, as well as based on data (World Bank etc).

I recently moved back to the UK with my family. It’s maybe not the golden 90s we thrived in but it can improve again. The lesson to learn is that nowhere gets better unless you contribute to it. We can’t be passive, we need to lean on to build and rebuild better societies. Oh and switch off news and social media from
time to time.

@Isitjustmetheniwonder i know what you mean. It’s something I think about all the time especially as I’m 50 now, there are pros and cons, but then I would miss here etc. I really can’t make a decision but I think I need to. I would also love to feel settled, I just try to take it day by day for now, I wish I had the answer

Honestly, it's best not to think about it too much, for the sake of your own sanity. We can't control what's going to happen to the world. All we can do is make life good for our children now. And prepare them for what the world could be like in the future. Watching the news, I do still feel lucky to have been born in the UK and to be living here, it could be worse. Me and DH sometimes talk about moving somewhere warmer. But then with climate change, more people will want to move further North. So our kids could find themselves priced out of moving back to the UK when they are adults. That's just one of my midnight musings.

There have always been issues going on in the world. I grew up under the threat of nuclear war. There have always been epidemics and pandemics, wars, political unrest, bad things happening. Also good things happening. All those issues you mention have always existed and been of concern. They always will be. It's just how the world is and has always been. With the internet we just hear a lot more about it now. So I don't worry because what will be will be and the world will keep turning.

I'd rather look at my daughter and think 'what skills do you need?' rather let the panic take me. You have decided on what the future may hold, so what will you do?

I'm genuinely really happy here. I'm not wearing rose tinted spectacles. I can see all the problems we're facing but still - I love my life here. There are a long list of positives in the UK. Other countries have their problems too. We're just not aware of them so much.

@Busephalus Isn't that quite a low bar to set though? 😬

My biggest fear is getting older with the NHS & the state it’s in & the ageing population issue that the gov hasn’t planned for.

It’s not as awful as it’s painted in the press - a good friend of mine in NZ always says “it must be so awful over there with the terrible NHS” and then expressed total astonishment that I had a breast lump assessed (cyst) and drained in less than 10 days for discovery, that I can get a same day Dr appt and that my mum had a bed in a local hospital within 4 hours of pitching up to a GP with dodgy symptoms.

we can criticise our MPs and government to our heart’s content, our bins usually get collected, education is available to all children whose parents can get them to school, heating was subsidised last year for everyone and all old people get help with theirs every year. We don’t have purse snatchers like Barcelona, we can protest what we want and we love to ask ministers very awkward questions. We will have a free election, likely a change of government without rioting and while it does rain a lot in winter, we have beautiful countryside, London is pristine in cleanliness compared to Paris or Barca or Frankfurt where they shoot up on the street outside the station.

I could write a long list of negatives too - and how, but we have some good things. I’m very happy to live here. People make a lot of effort to get here after all!

When would you say there has been a time things were better? People have died so young in the past very often, suffered a lot without modern medicine, worked under horrific conditions. This age has it's problems but is there a time in history you can think of where things were better?

I'm not at all hopeful for the future, I'm adapting my life according to those expectations. My expectations are climate breakdown and a worsening of political and social conditions as a result

It's not as miserable as it sounds, I'm enjoying what I'm doing which is trying to make myself and my life more resilient and myself more capable of taking the actions I feel are necessary now and in the future

What others have said is true. Ignorance is bliss so stop freaking out about what you’re reading. People in days gone by didn’t have access to the 24/7 stream of negativity and doom that’s on the internet . They just enjoyed the simple things in life and didn’t stress about the future.

We have grown up in a relatively peaceful time for our country but all throughout history there have been wars, famine, disease, poverty and natural disasters. These aren’t new.

If you have food to eat, some money to spend, a safe place to live and access to education and medical care what more do you really need? If global warming causes loads of flooding people will move.

Maybe it’s good the next generation doesn’t grow up to believe they can do anything, because I think a lot of people my age got a bloody shock after leaving uni and realising that’s not strictly true…/you aren’t just going to walk into an amazing job and have a fabulous home to live in unless your parents give you lots of handouts for a house.

Maybe in the future we will figure out a way to negate the impact of global warming… people are so scared of all the new technology that they sometimes forget about the benefits.

Humans will adapt but one day our time will come. That’s life. Don’t get anxious about it.

@spookehtooth What sort of things are you doing?

@Trixibella You’re right, those are reassuring points.