Editorial: Let's not forget how good we have it

Here are a few things that took place in 1916, a century ago:

The 40-hour workweek was born; child labor was banned; the first woman was elected to Congress; Louis Brandeis became the first Jewish justice on the Supreme Court, Coca-Cola introduced the recipe for Coke that is still used today; the toggle light switch was invented; bran cereal came into vogue; the National Park Service was created; the first American birth control clinic opened; the findings of World War I attempts at storing blood for transfusions were reported, spurring the establishment of the first blood bank in 1917; the painkiller Oxycodone was concocted; Albert Einstein published "Relativity: The Special and General Theory," exposing the masses to a revolutionary new understanding of the universe and the laws of physics that in turn set the stage for so many of the 20th century's advances.

Imagine what life was like before all of that. That time was so near that we can almost reach out and touch it. There are people living today who lived in a world before those things. That's how short the distance has been between those advances and today's world. Many among us live lives of pessimism. It is easy to become cynical. It is easy to focus on everything that is wrong. And to be sure, every life has its share of tragedy, heartache and challenge, some lives more than others. A thorough look back at 1916 wouldn't just find advances; it also would turn up plentiful examples of war, senseless violence, poverty and injustice, just as a review of 2016 sadly would.

It is good to be mindful of the work still to be done. But it is as important, if not more so, to marvel at the age in which we live. No age has been as blessed as ours. Compared to any other age, over thousands of years of civilization, the luxuries and benefits we so often take for granted - in all areas - are breathtaking.

Consider some of the advances since 1916 - the amendment granting women the right to vote; integration; progress on civil rights in so many areas; Social Security; Medicare; the space program; the moon landings; the pill; Viagra; movies with sound; the television; the cellphone; the personal computer; a national highway system, popular music, the widespread availability of photography and video recording; social media.

There are convenience stores and specialty stories and affordable restaurants and healthier foods, and not just on seemingly every street corner but as close as your keyboard too. Almost every home and car has air conditioning and heat. We all have indoor plumbing!

Consider the medical advances and the transportation advances and the communication advances and the educational advances. Some may date back further than a century but not much further than your great-grandparents' childhoods.

Imagine in the 19th century the idea of airline travel and what anyone living then would have thought of the idea. Now middle-income families fly across continents and hemispheres with almost no thought at how special the experience is. What spectacular views we have below us that used to belong only to birds. Horizons for centuries were based on how far a person could walk or perhaps ride a horse; today, almost everyone has a car and the horizons have almost no limits. We think no more of driving to Wisconsin than we think of walking to the next street corner.

Shortly after 1916, a flu pandemic claimed an estimated 20 million to 40 million lives. Only a decade and a half before, President William McKinley died not as a result of an assassin's bullet but because a physician followed what was then the standard protocol of sticking his finger into the wound, introducing a lethal infection. Today, we have means to detect diseases early enough to treat them, polio and tuberculosis have been all but eradicated, and hearts and other organs are transplanted.

What a world we live in. What an age of blessings. Let's pause for a moment today and give thanks for them.