Honorable Mention - Joan Upton Hall, Age 68

Welcome to our Optimistic Essay category. Here you will find the $1,000 winning contest essay, 5 finalist essays and 15 honorable mention essays and a growing list of hand-picked select essays that readers submitted during our "Why Are You Optimistic About the Future?" contest. This is a special category dedicated to those who took the time to share their touching stories and bright perspectives with HappyNews.com.

The happiest news I know for the future is how often the news media's dire warnings about real or imagined terrors prove wrong. Don't get me wrong, information about how to avoid trouble is great, but what good does it do to scare us

silly over things we can't do anything about? Remember when they convinced us there would be a massive plague if we didn't all get flu shots—only to find there wasn't enough vaccine to go around. Fortunately the prediction didn't come true anyway.

Most people I know have given up on the food fears too. What good does it do to have only these choices of death-by-eating: bird flu, mad cow disease, mercury poisoning in fish, or pesticides on veggies? What's left? Grubs? The only thing you can do is laugh—and find out a few simple precautions.

Would it hurt a media's ratings that much to balance bad news with something heartening now and then? Kudos to TV's 20-20 program at the end of 2005 for bringing us profiles of two of the newest CEO celebrities, the founders of Ebay and Costco. By all accounts, they're both nice guys, who, instead of living like the Enron sultans as they could easily afford, do actual work and treat their employees well. They use their wealth to fund projects that make the world a better place to live.

But such a news program is as rare as adventure in a gated community. I got to thinking where we'd be today if there had been mass media in the olden days to stifle the risk-taking of our forefathers and mothers.

Take the cavemen of North America for instance. What if the news had warned, "Wooly mammoths have just been declared an endangered species. Hunting them is now punishable by deportation back across the Bering Strait!" Would our ancestors have starved? Would woolly mammoths, instead of humankind, be the dominant species today? Mr. M. would wear Volkswagen bugs for shoes, and if you think our SUVs are big…

An alternate history might have had Eve pick up her Eden Times on that fateful morning she was to meet the serpent. The lead story might have warned, "Hobnobbing with snakes can infect humans with hepatitis." Even if she thought

"hepatitis" meant "heebie-jeebies"—remember, she hadn't yet tasted the fruit of knowledge—she might have avoided that forked tongue slick talker. And we'd still be living in the Garden of Eden, never knowing the wonders—and I do mean wonders—of the fashion world.

Or being scared silly about what might happen outside the Garden.

A few centuries later, consider Noah. He had enough trouble on a day to day basis without knowing what potential problems could lie ahead. What if the news had stated, "Bird flu epidemic could kill thousands"? If Noah had decided to reduce his risks, the world today might be devoid of our feathered friends. You couldn't blame him if he'd rationalized that leaving them out would make more room to store extra kitty litter. Have you ever wondered about litter boxes for all those lions, tigers, and cheetahs? Oh my!

Another problem could have arisen for Noah when the daily paper gave its final weather report: "Heavy rains predicted over the next 40 days and 40 nights." Wouldn't the populace have stopped laughing at "Crazy Noah," stampeded aboard, and swamped the Ark?

And when Joshua fit the Battle of Jericho, what if the news had warned, "Prolonged trumpet blasts can damage hearing"? Would his armies have gone AWOL to avoid the handicap?

The Pilgrims had 'way more than their share of problems without knowing in advance that about half of them wouldn't survive the first year. No wonder they made it a national holiday when the Native Americans suggested a covered dish dinner. We're just lucky there weren't news circulars advertising "Huge Day-after-Thanksgiving sales!" The Pilgrims would have jumped back on the Mayflower to get back to the stores. So much for Plymouth Rock.

But the Caucasians did stay on and eventually began the westward movement—translation, invasion of land already occupied by Native Americans. If headlines had read, "Pioneer families have an 80% chance of being raided by Indians," would the wives and children have stayed home?

Or what if tribal headlines had read, "Of all treaties signed by The Great White Father, 99.9% are predicted to be broken"? Instead of duking it out with Custer, Sitting Bull might have taken Congress to the Supreme Court for breach of contract and kept half the U.S.?

In our "information age," where does media draw the line between helping us avoid danger or paralyzing us with paranoia? In other words, will "the truth set you free," or is "ignorance bliss"? I say we use the common sense that has

brought us to 2006.

Thank goodness, media doesn't often produce self-fulfilling prophecies, but what about when it does? Let's try giving equal time to favorable predictions and see what happens.