OPTIMISM, GRATITUDE, AND BABE RUTH

OPTIMISM, GRATITUDE, AND BABE RUTH

“Optimism—even, and perhaps especially in the face of difficulty—has long been an American hallmark.” – Pamela Druckerman, Franco-American journalist and author

Yes, an optimist sees a glass as half-full while a pessimist sees the same glass as half-empty. And during unsettled times both perspectives manifest themselves. But while realism is important, optimism is healthy. As long-suffering Brooklyn Dodger fans used to say, “Just wait ‘till next year!”

Then there’s optimism’s first cousin—gratitude.

As Amy Collette—author of The Gratitude Connection—put it: “Gratitude is a powerful catalyst for happiness. It’s the spark that lights a fire of joy in your soul.”

Yes.

But to experience real gratitude one needs context. One can’t truly appreciate blessings unless one knows what it’s like without those blessings—which brings us to our current COVID-19 pandemic.

If Americans knew more history, they’d have more context, gratitude, and optimism.

Two months ago, most folks were probably unaware of the 1918 influenza pandemic which killed scores of millions. Now people know much more about a deadly scourge many times worse than what we’re now facing.

My grandmother, Yvette Lussier, lost a younger sibling to that 1918 pandemic.

Then she lost another.

And then another.

It was a sad month for the Lussier family up in St. Liboire, Quebec, when they had to bury three children. But current circumstances that remind us of past events can teach us important history and provide context yielding gratitude and hopeful optimism.

Obviously I’m grateful Yvette survived. And Americans today probably have it better than 99% of the people who ever walked the earth. Indeed, until midway through the last century, most human lives were “nasty, brutish, and short,” to quote Thomas Hobbes.

A recent book rates a plug here: WAR FEVER: Boston, Baseball, and America in the Shadow of the Great War, by Randy Roberts and Johnny Smith. It profiles three Boston people—symphony conductor Karl Muck, Harvard law school grad Charles Whittlesey, and Red Sox star Babe Ruth—and how 1918 and World War I changed their lives and subsequently our world.

Muck was a Boston Symphony Orchestra conductor who was arrested for pro-German sympathies, imprisoned, and then deported. His story is a reminder about how civil liberties need to be protected in times of crisis.

Whittlesey joined the U.S. Army in 1917 and as a major commanded the “Lost Battalion,” a 600 man army unit that was cut off and surrounded by Germans in September of 1918. Whittlesey and his men refused to surrender, despite going four days without food or water. Eventually 194 unwounded survivors were rescued. Their story helped inspire Americans to victory two months later.

Babe Ruth, of course, became the penultimate American sports hero in 1918. That was the season that Ruth—perhaps baseball’s best pitcher—started playing regularly in the field. He led the Major Leagues in home runs that year as Boston won the World Series in a season that was cut-short due to the flu epidemic, similar to this year’s MLB schedule being curtailed by COVID-19.

Ruth took on each day with gusto and experienced life to its fullest. His optimism and joie de vivre served him well. He set another home run record for the Red Sox in 1919 before going on to some other team where he became an American icon. I don’t think he’d have flourished had he been a pessimist.

So this time of quarantines and social distancing affords us opportunities to ponder history and find context to make us wiser, better, humbler—and perhaps more optimistic as 2020 unfolds.

And as those Brooklyn Dodger fans used to say: “Just wait ‘til next year!”

(A.P.)