By Marc Stoufer III
In 2016, comedian Bo Burnham ended his Netflix special “Make Happy” by asking the audience, “On a scale from one to zero, are you happy?… What the f— kind of question is ‘Am I happy?’”
The song was called, as the lyrics might suggest, “Are You Happy?”
Looking around, in 2025, I don’t know if we are.
It seems shallow-breathed jokes about the end of the world and terrified tangents that get cut off with “but it’s not a big deal” are the norm now.
The United States dropped from 15th to 23rd in the Gallup World Happiness Report last year, Merriam-Webster’s 2024 Word of the Year was polarization, which is defined as when the interests of a group “become concentrated at opposing extremes” and 90% of Americans think we’re in a “mental health crisis,” according to a Kaiser Family Foundation poll.
It’s not hard to see why people would feel this way. In the last five years, societal and personal norms have been repeatedly shaken by pandemics, financial crises, political turmoil and the overall crushing weight of being a human in the year 2025.
Cool. So, now I’m depressed. What happens next?
There doesn’t appear to be a solid answer for that one. It seems the only thing not currently unprecedented is the fact that things are unprecedented.
Yet, we go on.
People raised hundreds of millions of dollars to help the people of Los Angeles rebuild after the devastating wildfires in the area. Scientists say conservation efforts actually are helping to slow environmental damage. At the 2025 Academy Awards, the film “I’m Still Here” gave Brazil its first-ever Oscar win. The Northern Lights were more visible this year than at any point in the last 500 years.
None of that undoes or changes the onslaught of bad news that seems to come at us every morning. But it speaks to our ability to comprehend the horrors and have the courage to try to make the good anyway. To live.
That’s what we do. We worry, we wonder, we hope, we help, we fear, we feel.
A cause we care about, a text to a friend, the end of an exam, a real good song on the radio, giving a stranger directions, hitting the snooze button just one more time – these are the things that keep us moving, that mean anything is possible.
Ultimately, “okay” is a relative term.
Are we okay?
Who am I to pretend to know?
All I know is that people, all people, have an innate desire for things to get better.
And, as long as we want them to be, as long as we keep pushing, even if they’re not… maybe they will be.
So maybe they already are.
