Do you ever miss good news?
In 2026, the tragedy of human suffering is the norm. Everywhere you look, you see headlines meant to shock – another mass shooting, another beached whale, another family cruelly separated.
It’s no wonder the tension in the air is thick enough to cut with a chainsaw – our collective nervous system is at a breaking point.
Once in a blue moon, you can still find good news. Organizations like Upworthy and Good News Network offer glimpses of hope and happiness in their headlines. The occasional Instagram account shows refreshing reels of positivity to break up doomscrolling through the daily horrors.
Yet, in these videos, something strange occurs – most of the “good news” isn’t purely good – it’s the reversal of something bad.
What Causes This Phenomenon?
Is it negativity bias?
Perhaps it’s true that good things happen all the time; we only don’t see them because we choose to focus on the bad.
Similar to how we never notice all the times our roommate did the dishes, but we notice the one time they don’t… or when they finally do them in June 2014 but they break your favorite mug in the process and never pay you back for it.
I’m looking at you, Jada.
This baseline shift in normality has shifted the lens through which we see the world, and some say our vision shapes reality – so where does that leave us?
When what once was obviously terrible becomes so engrained in our everyday lives that we don’t flinch when we see a passing video of catastrophe during our nightly scroll, we see stopping decline as a major victory.
This can also be traced back to media.
As journalists, we often report on the bad, because that’s what impacts people’s everyday lives. That’s what people want to read about. Of course reporters aren’t capturing every sunny day. We aren’t chasing rainbows to report after a summer rain. We’re chasing tornadoes and reporting on the damage. Even our good news articles are generally tied to something awful.
Breaking News:
- The bees are coming back (since humans contributed to their decline by destroying the environment).
- The economy survived one more day without collapse (despite our biggest reported job losses in recent history).
- A local nonprofit provided 50 meals to families in need. (Because we have at least 50 families in our community experiencing hunger.)
These are positive developments, but they feel like pseudo progressions. In reality, they mark the reversal of loss rather than the creation of something new – is that where true good news lies – a baby being born, a scientific discovery, or a new, sunny day?
These events seem wonderful, but under the microscope they, too, could be picked apart until negativity is revealed.
Babies are born through the unbearable pain of childbirth. Scientific breakthroughs are often celebrated because they can cure current ailments. The rising sun only matters because it once was too dark to see.
I can’t help but wonder if we aren’t the only era to feel this way. A peasant in the Middle Ages might have considered it good news that his harvest didn’t fail. Someone surviving World War II might have considered “our home was not bombed last night” to be the best news of their life.
In these considerations, we are reminded that good news is often relative. But not always.
Two people falling in love – not despite the odds, but thanks to them.
A work of art being created, not out of tragedy but out of necessity of heart.
A child’s laugh – the universal language of levity.
A random act of kindness – offered with no expectation of return.
These things don’t require a tragedy to precede them. They stand on their own.
So maybe it isn’t that good news no longer exists, but rather that we’ve become so accustomed to measuring goodness in terms of damage avoided than possibility created.
“Things are not getting worse” is a very different kind of good news than “something beautiful came into the world.”
This is the difference between hope and relief. Of course we long for relief when we have been holding our collective breath for as long as we can remember, the next mass tragedy hiding right around every corner.
Perhaps true goodness can be found in moments that expand life – that develop intimate connection, that inspire the idea of possibility and understanding. Maybe it exists in the beautiful and in all that flourishes.
Perhaps, in this world where pain is just as much a part of life as the absence of it, where the good cannot exist without the bad, it’s up to us to find pockets of opportunity for raw creation of good – to get our hands dirty in prepping the soil of our everyday for new life. Perhaps in this way we can reverse the damage of our tired, collective heart.
