This morning I did something simple but new to me: I took my daughter to the park, alone. Until now, it was always me and my wife, or me and my mother. But today it was just the two of us: me, her, and a Sunday morning full of other parents and toddlers.
At first it felt awkward, almost like when Elaine and George hung out on their own, without Jerry and Kramer. I’ll be honest—this was the scenario I feared most about becoming a father. Not the sleepless nights, not the diapers, it was the socializing. The park means mingling with “normie” people: small talk, shallow chatter, awkward nods. Exactly what I’d built my adult life around avoiding.
And yet, when I stood there, in the thick of it, I noticed something unexpected:
- Nobody had their phone out;
- Everyone was attentive to their kids;
- People were generous with toys and kind to my little girl;
- There was an unspoken baseline of understanding: we’re all in this together;
Maybe people are also kind, attentive, and good, just trying their best under messy conditions.
It struck me that maybe my default cynicism, this reflex, that people are shallow, selfish, disinterested in progress doesn’t tell the whole story. Maybe people are also kind, attentive, and good, just trying their best under messy conditions.
This realization felt oddly familiar.
In 2023, I traveled to Uganda, on what I had hoped would be the start of a documentary series. The project failed miserably and the series never materialized, but out of this experience, I gained incredible life’s lesson. What I saw there has stayed with me: real poverty, the kind of poverty I had only read about in the old National Geographic magazines or seen on the telly. People living in conditions so stark, so fragile, that the word “disadvantaged” suddenly felt too soft, almost insulting.
And yet, in the middle of that, the same pattern appeared:
- Parents loving their children;
- Friends laughing together;
- People carving out little spaces of safety and joy;
Different setting, same human condition.
I’ve also seen glimpses of this elsewhere: in the Middle East, during our work trips to Oman and the Emirates. Societies worlds apart from Croatia, but again, parents in parks, children running, families gathering.
And now, back home, it’s my daughter who’s forcing me to see it again. Forcing me into parks, into situations I would normally avoid, and showing me the universality of this pattern.
Here’s what I’m realizing: my bitterness comes from knowing what people could be focusing on. Economic equality. Fighting real poverty. Lifting each other up. And instead, societies obsess over football scores, Kardashians, folk music celebrities, all the wrong things. That disconnect has made me deeply cynical over the years.
Maybe the human condition isn’t as hopeless as my cynicism tells me.
But when I zoom in—whether it’s Uganda, Oman, or just a small park in Zagreb—I see something else. Something simple and profoundly human: people loving their kids, trying to create a bubble of safety in a messy world. And maybe that’s the point. Maybe the human condition isn’t as hopeless as my cynicism tells me. Maybe it’s both: stupid obsessions and small acts of decency, distraction and care, football flags and playground generosity.
The lesson, I think, is that I don’t have to erase my cynicism. It protects me. But I also don’t have to let it blind me. Because sometimes, in the middle of the noise, my daughter hands me a different lens, and the view is far less bleak than I imagined.
