I saw something flash across my phone the other day, and the first sentence caught my attention.

It went like this: “For a small amount of perspective at this moment, imagine you were born in 1900.”

Now, of course, I wasn’t born that year, but both my grandparents on my mother’s side were born in 1900. Growing up, it was easy to remember how old they were. It was just the year we were in at the time.

I often say about that 1900 generation, I wonder how they coped with all the change they had in their world, probably more change in their lifetime than any other in human history.

And I wish I had taken the time to ask a lot more questions of them when they were still with us. But the few questions I did ask left me knowing that, if nothing else, those folks were resilient.

Take my grandfather’s first job. It was around 1918. He drove a milk route in Des Moines, Iowa. No, not with a truck, but behind a team of horses. He told me how the horses were trained to know the route. They stopped where they were supposed to, and, in some cases, my grandfather would deliver the milk to one house and then go down the alley to another house and the horses were already there waiting for him.

He didn’t have the job very long, as he was crossing the bridge over the Des Moines River when a car slammed into his team of horses, and, unfortunately, both of those highly trained animals had to be put down.

For those born in 1900, the article on my phone continued, when you turned 14, World War I starts and lasts until you are 18, and 22 million people were killed, immediately followed by the Spanish flu epidemic, which took the lives of 50 million people. By the time you were only 29, the Great Depression hits, and, when you turn 39, World War II begins and an estimated 75 million people lost their lives.

And today, as we struggle through the COVID-19 pandemic, which has taken the lives of over 5 million people, we wonder mightily, how much longer until we return to normalcy?

Yet, as I read what our 1900 generation went through, I wonder, what, exactly, is normalcy?

Maybe normalcy is facing the challenges of today, first coping with them and, finally, overcoming them, only to face the next challenge. It surely must have felt like that for my grandparents and most likely for generations before them.

But somewhere interwoven in the same timelines of the tragedies we all face are inventions of wonder. My grandparents, the same folks who faced tragedies one after another, also lived through the inventions of cars, planes, indoor plumbing, radios, telephones, televisions, and, ultimately, the landing of men on the moon.

So as we begin another year, 2022, I hope we can keep all that has come before us and that which is yet to come in perspective.

Life isn’t a bed of roses or bowl full of cherries, and it doesn’t come with any guarantees of happiness, but, like our forefathers, we must remain resilient and balance the tough times with the good.

It’s so easy to get caught up in the negative when there is so much positive around us. It’s not easy. I know, and I must remind myself all the time to seek out the good.

A perfect example is my granddaughter, Maddox.

Her birthday is this week. She turns 12 years old, and she is the best teacher I have ever had.

She has Down syndrome and has had more struggles in her first 12 years than I have had in my lifetime. I eagerly anticipate the morning phone call each weekday between 6 and 6:15 a.m. She calls me from the school bus. Now, you put me on a school bus every morning at that hour, the last thing you want from me is a phone call, but her call … well, I wish everyone could be in on that call.

She is excited, glad to be alive, unburdened with things she can’t control, and she ends each call with, “I love you, PopPop.”

I get off the phone, often wondering what Maddox will see in her lifetime. She undoubtedly will face tough times, but her perspective is spot-on. Life is so fragile and fleeting, we need constant reminders of what truly is and isn’t important, and I am fortunate to be reminded of that every morning.

May the spirit of our grandparents and my Maddox be with all of us as we continue to seek that elusive normalcy and happiness we all want and deserve.

Happy New Year, 2022!

Greg Awtry is the former publisher of the Scottsbluff (Neb.) Star-Herald and Nebraska’s York News-Times. He is now retired and living in Hubbard Lake. Greg can be contacted at gregawtry@awtry.com.