It’s easy to find places of serenity. Put me in Utah fishing. Watching my kids play at the park. Taking a long drive. It’s still out there. You can find it and easily enough usually - if you have the time. People that don’t have the time, aren’t in retirement, have a hard time finding time. If I was retired, I’d have more time to enjoy those things. I’m not rich at all, but I’m in a better position than many people … and I have trouble finding the time nowadays.
But that doesn’t change some things either. The more macro view.
Do you honestly think things are better today than 10, 20 years ago? Do you think schools are safer, large venues are safer, public is safer? Hell, you can take kids to a cheerful Christmas parade and all get mowed down. You can go to a friendly festival and madmen are gunning. Do you think things are as affordable now as previously, relatively speaking? My home growing up was about 3x more than an annual salary. Now it’s 7x. Do you think other people are more at peace now, less prone to snap? Do you think that criminal penalties are a deterrent to being criminal? Did you used to have to worry about teachers touching kids, or showing wholly inappropriate material or dishing out some insane diatribe? My parents never even worried about it because the world was more sensible. Now, you have to review materials and go over the day to day.
I’ve seen a lot of things do a 180, personally. It’s easy to say “that was then, this is now”, “the world changes”, etc. While that may be true, we’ve gone backwards, imo. Life expectancy has been going down for awhile, stress is higher than it’s ever been, my parents never carried around this level of stress (according to my dad) and that was with cop bullets flying through our walls and windows, constant court dates and FBI raids.
I do what I can to find the time and I actually do a pretty good job at it. But those are just breathers, a temporary break from the insanity that this country has become.