Does anyone feel positive for the future?

[Insaneinthemembranesweep]

I don’t really mean the immediate future as hopefully things will improve with the road map of reduced restrictions (hopefully!) and I feel cautiously optimistic and hopeful about that.

I understand the huge costs of covid and this with brexit being hugely hugely concerning. But I’m finding all the posters about the hideous future and economic fallout, terrible struggles ahead and how the ‘best days are behind us’ really hard. I have two small kids and feel so guilty for having them into this world if it’s going to be awful and difficult for them. Day to day is it going to go back to ‘normal’? What will be so bad? I know we don’t know for sure but does anyone feel hopeful and positive that we can recover and there’s happiness to be had ahead?

Mumnset will do this to you. I urge you to step away or rise above it (there are positive people here too). People get off on imagining all types of worse case scenarios and enjoy the drama.

Nope

I don’t want to jinx it but yes I do

Not in the slightest.

Absolutely feel positive about the future. This will pass and we will find a new normal.

Have faith that human beings are resourceful and don't let the media over exaggeration cloud your judgement.

Just because you don't yet know how it will happen doesn't mean that we have to believe that it won't.

As a nation we have come through worse during WWW1 and 2. However these were so long ago now that current generations have no knowledge or memory of how we come out of a crisis. To me this just proves that we have actually been quite good at avoiding such a crisis for a very long time.

I am definitely a glass half full person. 😀

The thing is that we will only ever experience what is to come as the present. So there will be small moments of joy, contentment etc. even in dark times. And then we'll also adapt to circumstance - there's a certain benefit to being a slowly boiling frog! Even if the future looks like a scary dark mass, we won't experience it like that once we're in the middle of it. But that's my take on a potentially bad scenario. If I'm honest, I don't actually think the future will be bad. I'd look forward to the summer with your kids, I think a lovely time lies ahead of you.

@Mumski45 Thank you for the reassurance. I needed to read that right now.

I feel positive. I tend to live my life looking at the bright side though. Some people cope by expecting the worst, I'm the opposite.

Everyone I know in real life is feeling optimistic. But MN is full of pessimists who think being miserable makes them more intelligent because VaRiATIons.

Very positive. It's nearly over now. Everyone will have a vacince. Yep people will still die and covid never going away but I'm happily looking forward to my holidays and ignoring that covid 21 may appear

What Mumski45 said. I took my teenager to the Checkpoint Charlie museum in Berlin. DH and I spent ages marvelling at it. By the exit was a whole row of teenagers playing on phones. The horrors of WW2, the holocaust and the sudden appearance of a wall across a town, right outside some people's windows, was incomprehensible to them.

My DC didn't say so but I'm not sure that he could really believe that those things happened; not to real people, such as the ones around him.

Children born from now on will enjoy their world, whatever happens, and not give much thought to a pandemic in 2020/21.

Yes I am very optimistic for the future. Things are looking a lot brighter, summer is coming m, the evenings are getting lighter and we ads nearly there with lockdown.

@Mumski45

Absolutely feel positive about the future. This will pass and we will find a new normal.

Have faith that human beings are resourceful and don't let the media over exaggeration cloud your judgement.

Just because you don't yet know how it will happen doesn't mean that we have to believe that it won't.

As a nation we have come through worse during WWW1 and 2. However these were so long ago now that current generations have no knowledge or memory of how we come out of a crisis. To me this just proves that we have actually been quite good at avoiding such a crisis for a very long time.

I am definitely a glass half full person. 😀

This and we had the Spanish flu , Hong Kong flu and Asian flu which we got over I feel more positive x

@valadon68

The thing is that we will only ever experience what is to come as the present. So there will be small moments of joy, contentment etc. even in dark times. And then we'll also adapt to circumstance - there's a certain benefit to being a slowly boiling frog! Even if the future looks like a scary dark mass, we won't experience it like that once we're in the middle of it. But that's my take on a potentially bad scenario. If I'm honest, I don't actually think the future will be bad. I'd look forward to the summer with your kids, I think a lovely time lies ahead of you.

Yeah, in any present moment there's always a lot of darkness around and concerns for what lies ahead. The wars and depression of the first half of the 20th century. Then the Cold War and nuclear threat that followed. Vietnam war in the 60s and 70s. Post-war deindustrialisation. 9/11. Iraq. 2007/08 financial crash. Austerity. Brexit. Covid.

When did people really last think the present and the future is looking bright?

Very optimistic here. Life is going to be great.
There will be turbulence, it will be economically challenging etc but everything will be ultimately ok.

We won’t go back to pre-Covid life exactly, as there will be long term damage and some people will feel it more than others. But the sun will still rise and set, people will be happy and sad, children will play, there will still be love in the world and all will be well.

Yes I'm optimistic about the future. I read the thread I think you're referring to and went to comment but ultimately couldn't be bothered to argue. The fact is that some people quite like being miserable and catastrophising and they'll always find something.
Here's what I think, things will change because life never stands still and a big event like this is bound to bring change. Yes there will be struggles and difficult days but honestly, when has that not been the case?
But when we look back in 10, 20, 50 years we'll be able to see changes that are good, bad and indifferent. The future is what you make it so to me, being negative and moaning about things that haven't even happened is pointless.

I've just been talking to a friend on the phone. She has been shielding with, and caring for, her parents since March last year. She has been with her mum by patient transport to the hospital 4 or 5 times durung that period but has otherwise only left the house and garden once, iin early August last year for tea in a neighbour's garden.

I thought we might struggle with building up her confidence again and enticing her back out into the world but no.

She is having her first vaccine tomorrow, and is so excited. She was telling me all the plans she has from 29 March - meeting up with people to begin with, followed by meals out and trips out with people almost every day from mid April and June 21, assuming all goes well.

It was such a positive conversation - she was fizzing with excitement at being set free.

it is likely that things will get better (I was going to say "can only get better" but I don't want to tempt fate )

I do feel pessimistic, but due to climate change, not covid. I think very few of us really appreciate how catastrophic it is.

Think about you and your immediate family unit. Will you still expect to have an income? Will you have days out and holidays? In individual terms, most people won't feel a long term effect. Sure it will be on the news for years, perhaps headlines about cash bailouts for companies who declined due to covid but day to day life will generally be the same for most people.

I believe there will be some balance and things will even out somewhat for example I'm expecting a bit of a boom this summer and our British resorts will be bustling again. It may take a while for foreign holidays to resume again in normality but I think afeer this winter, Covid will be reported as much (or as little depending on your view) as the flu rates are - retrospectively and will be much less on our minds in day to day.

I had a child born in 2003. 9/11 turned my world upside down and for me life has never been quite the same in that I never considered terrorism as something that would be a concern for me directly. My child however feels as safe as he ever has, this is the world he's always known. As a child in the 90s I was oblivious to IRA bombings and how close they actually were to me, they didn't feature in MY world. I imagine my mother feeling the same when I was a 2 year old in the Cold War but again, this is something to me that isn't on my radar, only as something historical that sometimes is brought up when there are tensions.

Hope that gives you some perspective, things will return to normal but even if they didn't, your children will thrive regardless if you give them the best chance you can.

I am feeling personally ok, my life looks like it'll be ok (although changes ahead) but think things look genuinely shite nationally.

I was pessimistic last year and proved right so am very much hoping to be proved wrong this year to balance it out.

Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.

I am pretty optimistic. Even about climate change. I think Covid has probably woken some people up.

In any case it is pretty outside of my control. I will do the best I can and hope for the best.

The young people I know are magnificent.

We are on a tiny rock floating in the vastness of the universe. Our survival has always been unlikely/uncertain when you think on those scales.

why should life be great, when it was shit even before all this happened - climate change, social injustice, global inequality, lengthy working hours, mental health crisis, perma war in Middle East, etc etc etc.

No we don't know long term side effects of the vaccine we have had yet schools are going backpeople mixing cases going up new variants in the mix the next couple years very unpredictable

And that's without mentioning the economy and the health cost issues ect the pandmic will leave