So much of the background noise in our lives reminds me of worst-case scenarios, chaos and decline.

It's the low-level hum: at work, on the television, in the paper and especially on the Internet. The world we are shown is largely one of conflict and controversy.

There is a chronic undercurrent of something bad happening; an impending sense of potential disaster. Things fall apart, people leave us when we need them to stay, and too many people suffer random tragedies and violence.

In this background gray, which sometimes darkens, sometimes lightens, we have to remind ourselves of the other force that turns this great big sphere on its axis.

In this moment, as you read this, so many things are happening outside the gray. In this very second, these moments are unfolding:

Parents whose hearts longed to have a baby are holding their newborn for the first time.

A man who aimed too far out of his league is gazing at his bride and promising to love her forever.

A daughter is telling her mother she's going to become a grandmother.

A father is hugging his grown son and saying that he's proud of him.

A cancer patient is hearing a doctor say the word "remission."

A teenager has the keys to the car for the very first time.

The ground is shaking for someone getting kissed.

A baby, a spinal-cord injury patient and an amputee are all taking their first steps.

A brand-new business owner is making her first sale.

Someone, who no one believed ever would, is crossing a stage and accepting a diploma.

Someone is sounding out a word and beginning to read.

A writer is finishing a book.

An artist is being struck by inspiration.

A runner is crossing a finish line.

Someone is falling in love.

A stranger is saving another human being's life.

A boss is offering a nervous young adult his first job.

An unemployed breadwinner with a family to support is accepting a new job offer.

A soldier is greeting her family after a long absence, picking up a child and holding her so tightly.

An unlikely 10-year-old is scoring a game-winning goal.

An abandoned puppy is being chosen by a new family.

Someone is being surprised with a cake and a birthday song.

Someone is proposing. Someone is saying yes.

People are dancing -- in streets, at parties, in clubs and in their bedrooms.

A child is showing his parents his best-ever report card.

All of that is happening. Somewhere in this big, wide world, in the time it took to read that. All that elusive, random, commonplace, extraordinary happiness is taking place -- changing people's lives or just filling them with gratitude.

I want to pause and consider each of those scenes unfolding. I want to let myself remember those moments from my own life and appreciate what so many millions of people the world over are experiencing.

We carry memories of our best times close to our hearts, but how often do we take a minute to pull out those pictures from our mind and allow ourselves the gift of reliving them? Of remembering the sights, sounds and smells as vividly as we can?

It doesn't cost anything. And science has shown us that dwelling in the good -- past or present -- makes us happier. The act of recalling, the process of committing to memory these moments, serves us well when the world seems dark.

It's a reminder today, of all days.

Sometimes, love wins.

I cared about my grades as a student.

My parents did too, although not oppressively so. I learned early on the positive attention that came along with A's. Once they knew I had internalized their expectations as my own, they focused on all the other things they had to worry about while raising six children.

My parents assumed I would try my best in school, because, why wouldn't I?

They relied on twice-a-year report cards and occasional progress reports to reaffirm this belief.

My relationship with grades became more complicated when it was my children being assessed. After elementary school, not a single paper report card comes home.

Like students across the country, all of their grades are accessible through an online portal. The portal for our district is called Infinite Campus. Even the name sounds ominous. So vast, those grades -- creeping into every corner of time, space and existence.

Teachers are expected to post every homework assignment, quiz and test result. Some schools send notifications with each update. Some parents download the portal app on their smartphones and check the updates hourly. I never became that involved, but during the first year of this transition to online grades, I paid close attention to my daughter's marks. If I saw a score that seemed lower than usual, I would urge my child to take the retest. If an assignment appeared to be missing or incomplete, I'd suggest she talk to her teacher or turn it in for partial credit. I would remind her and follow up frequently.

It took me a year to realize that so much information can quickly go from blessing to burden. I wanted her to do her best, but not because I had a hawkeyed focus on her scores.

I can be a slightly obsessive, competitive workaholic, and worry about my children being too similar and feeling so much pressure. But then I also worry about them not being motivated and competitive enough. I recognized this impulse and wanted to check it before I made all of us miserable. Up-to-the-minute, 24/7 access to their grades isn't the best thing for my mental health, or my relationship with my children.

I also didn't want to become a crutch for her academic achievement. If there is a missing assignment, let her figure out how to make it up.

Easy access to every grade can flip a free-range parent into a hovering helicopter. One parent posted a question on the Free Range Kids website which asked: Are hourly report cards a good idea?

Parents have to figure out where their child thrives and struggles, and decide how to help them grow in the areas they need extra support. Some kids need additional academic help. Others need to grow emotionally or to learn independence.

I decided that by taking responsibility for my child's work, I was robbing her of the opportunity to do so on her own.

This year, I never logged into the online portal. I asked regularly about what she was learning in her classes, which books she was reading and how the tests were going. If she was struggling with a subject, we helped her or found a tutor who could. I talked to her about her presentations, group projects and class discussions. I responded promptly to any teacher email and attended all the conferences. I volunteered for field trips but stepped aside from school projects.

As an Asian-American mother, I may be parenting against type by opting out of hypervigilant grades monitoring. For children of immigrants, there can be a culture of high academic expectations. I don't have the will (or energy, frankly) to be a Tiger Mom, but I lean in that general direction.

Even with this hands-off approach, I knew I had a safety net.

My husband kept tabs on her progress through the website. He is much more laid-back about all aspects of parenting, so perhaps it makes more sense for him to keep an eye on the online grade book.

I asked her if she noticed that I hadn't checked in on her specific grades this year.

"Not really, because Dad was stalking my grades, like, every week," she said. (He looks at her grades every few weeks.) It's kind of like role reversal, she added, that her father would ask about assignments.

I explained to her the difference between internal and external motivation.

"I want you to learn to do well for your own satisfaction -- not to please your parents or teachers."

"I do everything for myself, anyway," she said.

Were truer teenage words ever spoken?

I asked her how she ended up doing this year. Just as good or slightly better than last year, she said.

Bonus: I had nothing to do with it.

Dr. Li Ern Chen was training as a surgical resident at Washington University in St. Louis when she saw a peer humiliated in the operating room. It wasn't the first time.

A well-known surgeon was the teaching physician in the room. He would interrupt a resident's work if he or she made the slightest move he didn't like. The surgeon would instruct the doctor to stop working and go stand in the corner.

"Put your instruments down and step away from the table," Chen recalls him saying to his trainees in the middle of a surgery. If the doctor being reprimanded was engrossed in treating the patient, the surgeon would rap his or her knuckles with a metal instrument before sending the doctor to the corner, she said.

"It was awful," Chen said. "People would come out of the OR crying."

The doctor's behavior was legendary and tolerated for years, she said. Hundreds of people had witnessed it, but no one ever spoke up or challenged him. He has since left the institution. Even though Chen was never personally targeted by him, it made a lasting impression on her.

"In academic medicine, there is very much a hierarchy," she said. "The people at the top have the power. They also have the ability to abuse the power."

Chen made it her mission to flatten that hierarchy.

Chen said she didn't feel she could make a difference by speaking up as a resident, because she was in a culture that tolerated that doctor's abusive behavior. She has now made it part of her life's work to create a different culture -- on a much larger scale.

She now oversees surgery departments in 19 hospitals in Texas. She has instituted a standard of mutual respect among surgeons, nurses, residents and students in the operating rooms.

"They will treat all people with respect," she said. Otherwise, she takes corrective action. "People are not allowed to get away with it."

Challenging highly trained colleagues is not without personal risk. The norms and routines of a clinical practice, like any ingrained or habitual behaviors, are difficult to alter, according to a commentary by Dr. David Shearn in the Western Journal of Medicine. That would appear to be especially true for the high-pressure stakes of an operating room, where the surgeon literally holds a patient's life in her hands. Attempting to change years of tradition on top of years of training could cause a revolt by those invested in an older system.

It was for this stand that Chen was honored recently, along with four other groups and individuals at the HateBraker Hero Awards in St. Louis.

Susan Balk, the founding director of HateBrakers, said the goal of the nonprofit is to encourage ordinary people to "hit the brakes" on bullying and hatred. At this year's awards, the organization honored individuals and groups from around the country, including a group of students from Old Bonhomme Elementary School near St. Louis. The kids demonstrated outside of their school after learning that a driver had shouted racial slurs at an African-American crossing guard at the school.

"I believe we learn from role models," Balk said. She described the honorees, including Chen, as heroes who showed moral courage. They disrupted a cycle of abusive behavior or violence by educating and leading.

"We should be celebrating that kind of triumph publicly," Balk said. The awards program noted that Chen confronted bullying and hazing, and these reforms have reduced errors and benefited patients, as well as the health professionals.

As a pediatric specialist, Chen has worked with hundreds of children and their families. She hopes parents also impart the same idea to their kids as she pushes in the OR: Everyone is different, and everyone brings something valuable to the table.

"It's not about how old you are or how smart you are or who your parents are," she said. There are some individuals who cannot feel good about themselves unless they are putting people down, she explained.

Along with repairing broken bodies, she set out to fix a broken system.

She had taken an oath to heal, and is keeping that promise in more ways than one.