Between the 1970s and 2020s, global meat production more than tripled, making it one of the most significant contributors to the climate crisis. However, in this imagined milestone, conscious consumers worldwide mindful of the environmental, health, and animal rights implications of their eating habits finally succeed in reversing this centuries-long trend.
We often even perceive the world as getting worse even when it is actually demonstrably improving.
No creation is ever pure emergence or pure design. Acts of genius require both fertile ground and someone planting and tending to a seed.
Malaria has been one of the biggest scourges on humanity for millennia and mostly kills babies and infants. However, through the widespread dissemination of a vaccine developed in the 2020s and other mechanisms, global efforts to eradicate perhaps the deadliest disease known to humanity finally find resounding success. In the 20th century alone, malaria claimed between 150 million and 300 million lives, accounting for 2-5% of all deaths globally. By the halfway point of the 21st century, these deaths had been effectively eliminated.
We simply cannot do it all. We cannot do everything we’d like to do without burning ourselves out. So we must choose to let many things go to more fully choose our highest vision of who we are and what we are here to offer.
Purpose is like a garden. When we are feeling a lack of purpose, we don’t go out in the woods digging for it. We simply plant some seeds, pull some weeds, water (but not too much), and give it time.
Though food waste rose for decades as more people around the world grew more affluent (and thus more willing and able to waste), total global food waste finally begins to decline due to new policies and increased consumer awareness.
Through the development of effective, safe vaccines and treatment plans and reliable ways to send care to poor and rural populations, the world’s nations effectively eliminate HIV as a cause of death worldwide. As of 2023, over 42 million people had died of HIV-related causes since the beginning of the epidemic. By the 2050s, such deaths become mostly a thing of the past.
Let’s stop subjecting ourselves to this pointless, unwinnable battle against enough. Instead, let’s consider what we might do with our lives if we didn’t actually have anything to prove in the first place.
I was in my late 20s, traveling in Peru for a work conference. Once the conference ended, I took a solo excursion from Lima to the Sacred Valley near the ancient Incan cities of Cusco and Machu Picchu
