Positives of reality better than scary maybes

Sadly, at least for the time being, this will be my last article. I have loved writing for the Boulder City Review and enjoy the opportunity to be a voice within our amazing town.

Throughout the time I have been writing I have tried to be a positive voice in our community. Since I have gotten to know many of the most vocal in our community I have noticed that all of us, myself included, have a tendency to get so passionate about current issues, both national and local, that “may” lead to serious consequences that we can forget just how wonderful our community and lives are.

Maybe climate change will lead to catastrophic sea rise and we will all die by 2030. Maybe North Korea or ISIS will get a nuclear warhead and kill millions of Americans. Maybe President Donald Trump will start a devastating trade war with China and send us into a devastating depression. Maybe our national debt becomes so high that the inflationary pressure crushes the dollar and our economy.

Maybe public-school policy ruins education for our children and they will never learn what we learned as kids. Maybe a large solar flare destroys the electric infrastructure and leads to large power failures and thousands of deaths.

Maybe Interstate 11 going around us destroys the town, plummets our home values, and our town as a whole. Maybe the mayor and City Council push a pro-growth agenda and completely ruin our small town. Maybe we live in scary times.

The reality is you hold in your hand a device that has access to more knowledge in seconds than your great-grandfather could have accessed in a lifetime. The reality is literacy rates are higher worldwide than they have ever been in history. The reality is for a few dollars you can buy exotic fruit, like pineapple, that kings of early ages didn’t have access to. The reality is you can talk virtually face to face with almost anyone in the world for next to nothing.

The reality is 99 percent of Americans and much of the world has access to clean, potable water. The reality is infrastructure is in place to support you to smoothly travel at 65 mph from city to city or to get goods shipped from across the world in a few days. The reality is, due to health care advances, we are living longer than our forefathers.

The reality is we live in a beautiful and unique town where we are surrounded by some of the kindest, most charitable people I have ever met, who are almost universally working hard each day to preserve and keep the amazing heritage of Boulder City.

The reality is there are a lot of scary maybes out there. I am not saying we should ignore them or pretend they do not exist. But, the world will always have scary maybes. Those who have gone before us worked very hard to make some wonderful realities and how sad they must be when we let scary maybes overshadow them.

When tempted to tear our hair out because an election or specific issue does not appear to be going our way, I hope we can take a step back and think how wonderful life is and how blessed we are. We can look around us and see how much we are surrounded by loving, caring fellow community members and then, in a positive way, work to keep our town moving in a positive direction.

To all those who have read my articles, written their own, been a voice for positive change and to those who continue to work in a positive direction in this town I say, thank you, keep up the good work.

Nathaniel Kaey Gee resides in Boulder City with his wife and six kids. He is a civil engineer by day and enjoys writing any chance he gets. You can follow his work on his blog www.thegeebrothers.com.