BYBS: Sanity

For a good part of my life I was convinced I was going to die in a nuclear war. The US and the USSR had thousands of weapons pointed at each other. One misstep, one mistake could cause the end of the world.

To me, this was humanity's ultimate demonstration of stupidity, paranoia and insanity. It was what was wrong with us. Why we deserved to become extinct.

But then something happened. More specifically nothing happened. Even more specifically, the US and the USSR did not obliterate each other.

I'm not sure how this affected anyone else, but for me, it was a life changing event. I was so used to being cynical, so set in the belief that there was no hope, that nothing could be changed. The knowledge that we as a race could avoid the choice of destruction for any reason was an option that simply did not exist in my world.

This was something whose benefits I still feel today. The more obvious is that I'm alive, but the more subtle is that now I'm not quite so cynical about people. I give them the benefit of the doubt. I have hope.