People are generally quite prone to hyperbole and hysteria. You’re no exception, and neither is your brain; your memory, especially. If one bad thing happens to or near you, your brain will elaborate on it until it become an epidemic. Even if you only hear about a bad thing, your memory will make it worse, and more frequent, and more the cause of actual malice.
This is just a statistical bias in that direction, and it’s damned near universal. The good news? Statistically speaking, almost every bad thing you can think of isn’t actually as bad as you think.
Think about something you view as “bad” in the world. Take a moment to imagine (or pretend you’re “remembering”) the details, as many as you can. Then, take ten minutes and go do some actual research. You’ll find that almost universally, it’s not so bad.
The actual thing itself might be bad, of course – I’m not saying “kidnapping” isn’t as bad as you think. I’m saying it’s not as frequent as you think. If you say something like, “Kidnapping is rampant! It happens all the time, and people usually get away with it, and nobody cares,” then you’re just wrong. Kidnapping is bad, but it happens less frequently than you thought, people who do it get caught, and as for nobody caring? Well, if they didn’t hear about a kidnapping case today, then their brain didn’t do what yours did, which is blow it up into a whole thing without you even realizing. That’s why it seems like “nobody cares.”
Look, there’s bad stuff in the world. And you can (and should!) make an impact where you can. But if your own life is getting worse because of how bad you perceive the world to be, have hope. Both the world and your specific life are not so bad, after all.
The Opportunity Machine 