Are these dark times for you? Some people around us have it even tougher

I was chatting with a great journalist friend not long ago, and she said when she talks with fellow journos the conversation always turns to the world’s problems because we all pay close attention, and it’s terrible, just terrible. She had also just talked to a non-journalist friend who didn’t think about any of that but said, “Yeah, I just went to Cabo. It was amazing.”

It’s easier, not knowing. There’s a saying about that.

If you read the news, these are dark times. Inflation may be slowing but it’s still here, and a recession is predicted to follow behind. The housing market is both sagging and, for those wishing to own something, often impossible. The United States, which has shaped Canada’s development in so many ways and which is our biggest global influence, may not be a democracy for much longer. The climate is coming apart in all kinds of ways: drought; floods; heat; storms. The pandemic is over, except it’s not.

Sorry. Reading the news in dark times can be overwhelming, especially now. So what is the human instinct in dark times? Some people pull up the ladders; some people close the blinds. You can’t blame them. And some people reach out and try to take care of each other, but as the world becomes more turbulent the instinct is to take care of those closest to you: to reconnect with the community that was fractured over the past two and a half years. To rebuild a foundation of your life.

But we should try to care about more than that, if we can. If you are still with me, I am writing about the Star’s Santa Claus Fund. The fund has delivered gifts to underprivileged children in Toronto since 1906, the boxes remain simple: Winter mitts; a toque; socks; a toy; cookies; a dental hygiene kit; a book. As times get tougher, the fund remains the same thing as the Star’s summertime Fresh Air Fund: it is a civic bond. It is a way to care about people who have less than you, and people you will likely never meet.

The Star has asked for donations to fund this kindness through good times and bad, through depression and wartime, through recessions and crises and the whole sweep of time over a century. And it’s always been true for some people that it’s hard to care about people you don’t know. In hard times, lean times, dangerous times, it can get harder.

But what else do we have? In some ways, the pandemic has been a trial run: it has been the most significant and universal geopolitical event of our lifetimes and has reordered so much. But the one truth of the pandemic is the same as the truth of climate change, and of the economy, and of the increasingly radical, hate-filled, antidemocracy forces in the United States: the vulnerable are the ones who suffer first, and most.

So what do you do? At the far end of individualism is a recent piece in The Guardian about the superrich who are preparing for apocalypse, which inevitably leads to bunkers or compounds, a secure water and air supply, all that. But one question stopped the preppers cold: “How do I maintain authority over my security force after the event?”

It’s a fundamentally unanswerable question to a fantastical question — hopefully, anyway — but it gets to the heart of things: humans have always been based on community, and community means taking care of more than yourself. It’s conceptual and is at the heart of so many arguments over government, at every level. Do you only care about yourself, or does that care extend outwards? How far?

Over the years, in this small but meaningful way, the people of Toronto have cared. This year the Star is aiming to raise $1.5 million to send 50,000 boxes to some of Toronto’s most disadvantaged kids. If you think inflation has hit you hard, imagine the family of four living in a one-bedroom, with precarious employment. If you think COVID was difficult for you, imagine the multi-generational family with caregivers who had to keep going to work, no matter what.

It would be easier not to think about them; close the blinds, pull up the ladder. It’s so much easier not to think about the people who have it tougher, because once you start, where do you stop?

The point is that you should start. Times are tough, but every solution has to be collective; individualism is like despair, and despair is the worst emotion because it gives you nothing. Caring about other people is the way, and if times are tough for you, how tough are they for people who don’t have as much? Every year the Star tries to help, a little. You can too.

If you have been touched by the Santa Claus Fund or have a story to tell, please email santaclausfund@thestar.ca Bruce Arthur is a Toronto Star columnist. Follow him on Twitter at @bruce_arthur.

GOAL: $1.5 million

How to donate

With your gift, you can help provide holiday gift boxes that inspire hope and joy to 50,000 underprivileged children.

Online: To donate by Visa, Mastercard or Amex, scan this QR code or use our secure form at thestar.com/santaclausfund

By cheque: Mail to The Toronto Star Santa Claus Fund, One Yonge St., Toronto, ON M5E 1E6

By phone: Call 416-869-4847

The Star does not authorize anyone to solicit on its behalf. Tax receipts will be issued.

To volunteer: scfvolunteer@thestar.ca