WE'RE LIVING IN THE BEST OF TIMES, MR DICKENS

There are scholars who argue we are living in the best of times. Say what...? It's true, they reply. Despite wars, terrors, environmental disasters and financial collapses, they have the facts and statistics to argue that this decade has been humanity's finest.

Why then doesn't it seem that way...? It's the media, they reply. Global media brings us every trauma every hour of every day, giving a truly golden era a gloomy look

Taken raw, the facts and statistics are on their side. As Charles Kenney of Foreign Policy writes: "The planet's 6 billion residents lived better, longer, more peaceful and prosperous lives than ever before in recorded history." He points to birth/longevity/literacy/poverty rates to lock in his case.

His stubbornly cheery report makes a good read. And offers some reason to pause in our daily despair. Charles Dickens may have said it best: "It was he best of time, it was the worst of times." To personalize all this >>

* The free enterprise system is the best of systems in the hands of proud individual enterprisers; it's the worst system when enterprisers like Blackwater have been found guilty of malfeasance in the Middle East, and still get 30 new billion-dollar contracts from the government!

* The college football season was always the best of times for those of us who grew up with the get-one-for-the-Gipper mythology wrapped around Notre Dame; now begins another worst-of-times season whose grim history seems peculiarly to have begun that September my youth ended!

* The black beverage coffee is the world's most exotic drink and its second most traded commodity; yet it is still the worst of times every morning as I once more take bean and pot in hand seeking the perfect brew!

* Joan has been the joy of my life for 60 years; but every birthday is the worst of times, for it is a reminder that there is a clock somewhere ticking!

As in Dickens' classic story, it is time to remember the world must be embraced just as it is, not as we wish it to be. By doing that, we can then honestly say: "It is a far far better thing I do than I have ever done before..."