If things are so good, why does it often feel so bad?

I think you know what I mean. 

Hardly a day goes by when we don’t hear good news: Des Moines is the best city for young adults; Iowa has one of the lowest unemployment rates in the nation; the quality of life here is as good as it gets.

Those things are all pretty much true, and we should be celebrating.

But I don’t feel like celebrating. Probably because I keep coming back to the good versus bad question. 

When I look for an answer to why things feel bad, it always comes back to the same thing: uncertainty.

It’s difficult to enjoy the fruits of success when we are constantly worrying about what comes next. 

I can’t enjoy the fact that my retirement portfolio put on some nice weight in recent years, because now I’m worried about a market downturn.

Just when I thought the city of Des Moines had settled on a reasonable plan for financing its future, voters in the suburbs turned thumbs-down on the local option sales tax, sending my property taxes up. 

Anymore, it seems like we can’t get through a week without confronting some new existential crisis that could end civilization as we know it. 

One day it’s the threat of nuclear war with North Korea. The next day it’s the Iowa Legislature passing useless laws aimed at limiting immigration, which is something this state desperately needs, or it’s lawmakers refusing to address our dirty water problems. 

If President Donald Trump isn’t alienating our European allies with bully-boy tactics or isolating us from the developing world with racist trash talking, he’s pushing us into a trade war with China where Iowa farmers will be on the front line. 

Plus, there’s the issue of climate change. It’s the elephant in the room that we continue to ignore, even as rising tides chew away at our coastlines. 

But are things really worse today than they’ve ever been before?

Is this worse than during the Revolutionary War period where partisans would tar and feather neighbors and carry them through town on a fence rail?

Is it worse than the Civil War, where more than 600,000 died at the hands of their own countrymen? Worse than the brutal labor strikes of the 1880s and ’90s where police shot and killed workers? Worse than the civil rights protests of the 1960s or the Vietnam War protests of the 1970s?

Perspective is everything. 

The real difference today is that we have instantaneous communications that report school shootings in Florida, Starbucks protests in Philadelphia and corruption in Illinois as if those events were happening here in Iowa.

Given our daily dose of tragedies, most people can’t see the larger picture. It doesn’t matter if the actual rate of violent crimes is down when the devices people go to for news are flush with blood and gore and worry. 

That’s what we see and hear, so that’s what we are going to believe.

I’ve decided that the key to my own sanity is to every now and then take a step back and look at the larger picture. Look at how much more comfortable our lives are today than they were 200 or 100 or even 50 years ago. 

And because I live in Des Moines, I also like to think how much more affordable my housing is than it is for my son in Brooklyn, N.Y., and how much shorter my commute is, how much easier it is for me to play golf, eat out or go for a bike ride. 

And now that I really think about it, maybe things really aren’t that bad.