On February 7th, President Joe Biden delivered the United State’s annual State of the Union Address. This year, the speech included commentary regarding medicare, the economy, covid, taxes, gun laws, and more, as well as featuring a brief back-and-forth between Biden and Republican members of Congress regarding a comment from the former on the latter’s stance on medicare and social security. More important than that, however, and just as important as the general information, is the reminder that the State of the Union gives us; that despite everything, we’re still here and still striving to become better.

When we think about the world around us today, especially on a national level, it’s easy to feel like it keeps getting worse. Like so many different things keep coming up and there aren’t any solutions because nothing’s being done. And if I’m to be blunt, that feeling is justifiable sometimes. It’s hard hearing all the negative stuff that happens every day, especially for us as high schoolers where it feels like we’re going to be expected to clean up this mess at some point. To me, the State of the Union helped remedy that, even if only for a bit. It was a reminder that no matter how bad things seem, or are, there are still some good things happening. We aren’t doomed to fail like it may seem like all the time these days.

Hearing about successes with covid, more jobs opening up, and education benefits possibly being on the horizon, it’s all a piece of good news. It’s not going to be easy to fix all the problems happening right now, we all know that. And things are pretty rough right now in general. Even in the speech itself, the back-and-forth was a little bit disheartening. But at the same time, it was nice to know that despite everything, some things are still getting done. Despite everything, things always have the capacity to get better, and are going to get better– that’s what the State of the Union tells us.

The State of the Union, sometimes also called SOTU, is a speech given each year by the President to inform the general public of the state of the country over the course of the past year. It’s a chance for the sitting president to discuss what has happened so far since the last State of the Union, and what the plans for the future are continuing into the next year.