The world we live in is, in a
word, terrible. It is a terrible thing to be alive at this point in human
history. Everyone hates everyone for being different. Half the world is
starving and the other half is obese. We’re slowly killing the only planet we’ve
got. There are guns and germs and things which threaten to kill us each and
every day and looking at the state of the world, that might not be such a bad
thing.
The good news is that there are
people trying to fix it. Extraordinary men and women who are dedicating their
lives to fixing the world. They’re passing legislation, they’re inventing new
technologies, they’re curing diseases, they’re giving to others, they’re
teaching us more and more about the world and, little by little, making the
world a less terrible place every single day.
And I can’t do those things.
I can’t cure a disease. I can’t
stop people from building weapons. I can’t force rich people to share the
wealth. I can’t solve everyone’s problems. I can’t solve anyone’s problems. This world we live in is full, overflowing, with
frowns and tears and there’s not a single thing I can do about that.
But what I can do, what I’ve
always been able to do, what I have had a clear talent for doing for even
longer than I can remember, is making smiles and laughs. I can’t get rid of the
frowns and the tears, but I can create smiles and laughs.
If you put too much cream in your
coffee, you can’t take the cream out again. But you can always add more coffee.
And I decided a long time ago that maybe that’s what I was supposed to do. I
can’t take the cream out of the coffee. I can’t take the bad things, the
frowns, the tears, out of this world; that’s a job for better people than I
could ever hope to be. But maybe I can put more good things into the world.
Maybe if I fill the world with silliness, with love, with hope, with laughter,
with smiles, maybe if I can do that, then the bad things won’t seem so bad. Or
at least it won’t seem like quite as many bad things.
