Run. Hide. Fight.

With all the shootings, violence, riots, and disasters in our world today, students have had these words drilled into their brains.  It’s getting to the point where we see everything as frightening or stressful.

 Despite this, there’s still a lot of good out there.

During the California wildfires, the news and media seemed to focus all on the danger and destruction it caused, but what about the good people were doing during this time? Many communities bound together to save animals from the fires and even continued their rescues when the fire could be seen and the smoke could be smelled. Not only that, but the community also came together to help raise money for a family that lost everything when their house burned down.

Juniors Jasmine Lopez and Adrian Garcia both mentioned that with all this negativity out in the world it can feel “depressed.” Lopez mentioned that being shown the bad things and being told how to prepare for it was scary, and that though these bad or disastrous events happen people aren’t alone in it. 

She said that, “Everyone usually, when it comes down to things like this, no one really thinks about himself… everyone always thinks about others. It’s just like in the rush and you don’t want anyone to get hurt.”

Garcia said, “You don’t want to see anything bad happen to others so obviously you’re going to help.”

Both Garcia and Lopez mention that no matter how bad things are a person will be there to help you.

That’s kind of like the words in the song “You Will Be Found” by Ben Platt: “Even when the dark comes crashing through / When you need a friend to carry you/ And when you’re broken on the ground / You will be found.”

We aren’t alone in this world and we have to remember that there is always someone to talk to, even when we don’t think so. 

The Family And Community Engagement (FACE) liaison, Arlene Quiñonez, talked about how she reaches out to students who seem down and acting different than she knows they do. 

Quiñonez said that the negativity being shown to us can cause anxiety or something similar to it. She also mentioned that in order to encourage positivity, “We all kind of need to be each other’s support system. Be that helping hand… Knowing that if you see someone down, uplift them.”

With all the devastating things happening here in our nation and world everyday, we must remember through everything the world is still beautiful and good things still happen. The new club Bring About Hope is making it their effort to help students see the good and find help if needed. President of the club, Emanuel Negrete, mentions that the negativity “forms a cesspool of depression and all that.” Negrete goes on to say, “I guarantee you that for every tragedy, for every bad thing happening in this world, there could be anywhere from one person to a whole group trying to amend.” 

“It’s in humanity’s code to have hope in the despair that people are going through,” says Negrete. In order to encourage positivity in the communities, Negrete says that his club is trying to “remind students that A, they have the potential to change the situation around them and B, the world is not doom and gloom.” Negrete says that people have to “generally want to make a change in their life” in order to be able to be helped. The Bring About Hope Club wants “to make an impact we have to form a relationship with our student base where they want to come to us and we want to come to them.” 

Being positive can have major health effects and that’s a reason that we should try to look on the bright side of things.

The Washington Post wrote about a study of gratitude that said, “In the MRI scanner, the group that practiced gratitude by journaling increased their ‘pure altruism’ measure in the reward regions of the brain. Their responses to charity-gain increased more than those to self-gain.” We must remember that there are other things happening in this humongous world of ours. The choice is ours though; we can choose to keep looking into the darkness, or, like the great Fred Rogers said, we can, “Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping. To this day, especially in times of disaster, I remember my mother’s words, and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers — so many caring people in this world.”