The Summer of Our Content

The little girl skates around the patio table, arms out, clomping and gliding on Rollerblades the size of Army boots. Last June, she couldn’t do this, but a year is a long time when you’re 6. She’s a pro now. Around and around, to her amazement, she goes.

Remember that feeling? I do. Our wheels were on our bikes, and we would ride them, down to the end of our driveway and back. There was a long time when we couldn’t do it without wobbling and falling. And then, one summer, something clicked. We grew into a sense of balance, hit the next level. Just like that.

Maybe it’s just because it’s been such a long, weird, ugly winter that that balance comes to mind today. Summer has rolled around again, officially, and though Southern Californians probably make too much of their seasons, this summer feels special, as though something has clicked not only outside but inside, some mass state of grace.

The Japanese economy, once a source of obsessive and self-flagellating fascination to us, now teeters on the brink of collapse--and, while we may be sympathetic, we’re emotionally detached. Congress kills crucial tobacco legislation, but the craven sellout feels like a sideshow compared to the millions of people who already turned off to smoking simply because of the power of the facts.

In Sacramento, only the out-of-touch are still wallowing in the politics of anger; the debates are now focused on the distribution of plenty. In impersonal Los Angeles, the hottest issue involves the empowerment of neighborhoods. Even our injustices and setbacks, of which there are always so many, seem less hopeless: Welfare is cut for the homeless, but they aren’t too dead inside to protest, and to make it loud.

There was a time, not long ago, when we couldn’t even imagine this level of confidence and spunk. The hard times seemed forever; the metropolis felt doomed. Poverty was so intractable, we saw no answer but to blame the victim. Corruption in government was such a given; even to discuss it felt dumb.

Now, click. By every measure, the news tells us, Americans and Californians are more optimistic now than at any time in the past quarter-century. It took us a generation to find this balance. And yet, it seems to have happened just like that.

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It’s interesting, this drawn-out-yet-overnight return to optimism, not only for what it says about the political future, but for what it says about human nature and the capacity for growth. How can it be, for example, that a Field poll of Californians can show the confidence in the economy shooting up from about 30% to more than 60% in just a year? Or that a poll done after the June primary--and after years of disaster and misery--can find a whopping 66% of Californians suddenly claiming the state is “on the right track”?

Part of it, certainly, has to do with prosperity; it’s easier to feel upbeat when times are good. Part, too, lies in the reduced expectations of this global economy, as it sinks in that our parents’ prospects may never be ours.

But it’s hard not to see something else in there, too, some slow-motion factor that looks suspiciously like the will to evolve. Remember how school reform debates in the ‘80s always seemed to tiptoe around the politically incorrect issue of incompetent teachers? And how it was simply assumed that everyone, but everyone, was opposed to government spending, no matter what?

Now, though, we will probably always argue about the compromises that are innate in any school system. And though taxes will probably never be popular, don’t the debates seem now to be more truthful, the b.s. easier to see through? It would be nice if we had answers, but there’s also value just in being able to name your problems. To accept that, publicly and privately, you get what you pay for. To admit that a place is only as great as the people it reflects. To realize that problems like drug addiction and violence are more about mental and emotional health than good and evil. To acknowledge that a government is only as representative as its ability to connect.

Just seeing yourself honestly can be such a beginning, it will make you a new person, and in the past few years, Southern California has gone around and around itself, looking hard. I think the journey is part of those optimistic numbers. For the first time in a long time, there’s the sense that this place isn’t trying to kid itself.

All of which probably took longer than it should have, but there’s a case to be made for slow-but-lasting change. The best thing about this mood may be in the way it will surprise us by lingering, long past these hard-won summer days.

Shawn Hubler’s column appears Mondays and Thursdays. Her e-mail address is shawn.hubler@latimes.com.