There seems to be enough in the news to make one think everything in this world is falling apart. I’m sure you have your own experience of bad things happening recently. Better or worse is a perspective, and it can be tricky to determine the truth. The older you are, the more cycles you have been through of both good and bad times, so you see them as cycles. Older people may be more inclined to say, “ I can’t wait to get through this crap!” which implies they believe they will. Many young people that I have worked with, have just lived through one or two cycles to judge their future on, so they feel that the “bad” they are experiencing now may not end. There are people that are alive now that remember the shortages during WW2 and having to buy food with government issued (ration)stamps but right after the war was the greatest economic expansion. The Great Pandemic happened in 1918 and killed as many as 50 million, yet 3 years later started the most prosperous time in history which was even called Era of Prosperity. Unemployment is a good example of a regularly occurring positive/negative cycle. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unemployment_in_the_United_States#/media/File:Annual_rate_of_change_of_unemployment_rate_under_various_US_Presidents.tif
Instead of thinking of “better or worse” consider life as transitions. When we cut ourselves badly, we sometimes have to put antiseptic on our wound to help heal it. We know it will hurt in the short term but we also know it will expedite the healing process. We deal with at temporary pain so we can get better. Patience gets us through it.
I’m sure you can look at the news and do some research to show perpetual gloom and doom but you can do research also that shows good news. For one, cancer deaths are down and continue to drop so even though Covid deaths still remain a problem, it is temporary, whereas cancer survival will continue to get better. Yes, this is a time of global trauma but from it will come growth. If you ever have seen a field of dead, plowed over crops, you may think something catastrophic happened but what it may actually be is a fallow field. Fallow is to leave a field unsown and bare for a length of time so that the field can restore its fertility. Sown and unsown may seem like good or bad but it’s all part of the life process and ironically, a field sown for too long can actually be negative. It needs down time to be able to bring life back.
At the moment of this writing, the world has been experiencing massive shortages of pretty much everything. Yes, that is pretty bad but how much now are you appreciating what you were comfortable with? I’m sure you are much more aware of the value of things that before you took for granted. There has been shortages of things that I like but it has forced me to try different things and find new “likes.” I also found that the small independent stores are more stocked than the big box stores, with some having cheaper prices. Now I’ve realized how important those smaller stores are and why I need to support them.
The world right now is going through a transition and how we come out on the other side of it is up to us individually and collectively. Be patient while the land fallows but get ready to seed it soon. What you plant for the future is what will grow.