COVID test: Can Americans get our act together to build a better country for our children?

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This column is part of an ongoing series by Paste BN Opinion exploring the mental health crisis facing Americans.

It's easy to get discouraged and fall into cynicism as we struggle under a pandemic that will not end, an economy that leaves behind too many Americans, and a political culture that grows more toxic by the year.

But we can find comfort and inspiration in our personal and collective history. And know that hard times present opportunities to build a better future.

My father was born as World War I raged and the Spanish Flu pandemic began. My mother was born in the immediate aftermath of both conflagrations, which together killed more than 70 million people.

Before they finished elementary school, the stock market had crashed and America was plunged into the worst economic crisis in its history. When my father graduated from high school in 1936, seven years deep into the Great Depression, the national unemployment rate averaged 16.9%.

The worst was yet to come. 

In 1941, the United States was dragged into the deadliest war in the planet's history. By the time fighting ended four years later, as many as 60 million people were dead, including millions exterminated through industrialized murder.

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Before they were 30 years old, my parents had suffered through the devastating consequences of the two most gruesome wars the world has known, a pandemic that killed almost 3% of the world's population, and an economic catastrophe that shaped how they would manage everything from leftover food to spare change for the rest of their lives.

I've thought often in the past two pandemic years about what my mother and father endured as children and young adults. It hasn't diminished the frustration, or occasional fear, I've felt as COVID-19 leaves family and friends isolated and sick. But it has put what we've experienced into perspective.

Every generation suffers hardships that seem unending and unbearable. For my generation it was the nightmare of mutual assured destruction, of Vietnam and Watergate, of the misery index, of political terror that left visionary leaders dead and cities in ashes, and of an AIDS epidemic that has killed more than 33 million people.

For my children, it was 9/11 and the great recession, and now a pandemic too stubborn to fade away.

One reality I've accepted with age is that I learn and grow more as a person in hard times than good. Winning is great, in part because it reinforces what I want to believe about myself. Losing makes me face the truth about my weaknesses and resolve to do better.

As a nation, we've lost far more often than we've won lately. At least it feels that way as COVID deaths rise, our political divisions grow deeper and more dangerous, and officeholders from both parties seem overmatched by the times.

What are we willing to sacrifice?

How do we stop America's downhill slide? How do we use our losses as motivation to build a better country?

The answer takes me back to my parents. One word will forever embody my mother and father for me: Sacrifice.

So much of their time and energy, faith and hope were focused on their children, and not themselves. As a nation, that's what we need to be about – building a better future for generations of young Americans – this year and for years to come.  

Because there's so much work to do. Learning loss caused by school shutdowns and ineffective online instruction will hurt millions of students for the rest of their lives without urgent, lasting intervention. The isolation, fear, uncertainty and disruption of the pandemic has exacerbated mental and emotional health problems for millions of kids. Economic inequality is worse now than before the pandemic, despite the federal government pouring trillions of dollars into short-term assistance.

Mental health: Our kids' mental health is suffering. And America's schools aren't ready to help.

Don't look for Washington to solve those problems. At least not yet. We don't have many leaders, even in the highest positions of power; we have followers. And if they see and hear that hundreds of millions of Americans truly want to make investing in our children the nation's highest priority, our elected followers will get in line.

Now, that won't stop us from arguing about how to do it. Debates about how to accomplish our most important goals will always happen – and should. But if, as a nation, we can agree that America's vision and mission needs primarily to be about building a better society for our kids, then the essential questions of why and who will be settled.

Can our kids be America's greatest generation?

What if Generation P – born shortly before, during and after the pandemic – grew up to become the healthiest, happiest, wealthiest and most equal adults in the nation's history. I still have enough faith in America to believe it can happen. If we resolve to make it so.

One other lesson I've learned from living: The less I focus on myself, the better I tend to feel and the smaller my problems appear. We may find that's true as a nation as well.

If it becomes less about who's winning or losing at the moment, and more about working for and investing in a better America for our children and their children, then perhaps our current problems won't appear so insurmountable.

Tim Swarens is deputy opinion editor for Paste BN.