I meant to write a cheerful post tonight.
After all, the skies were blue and sunny today; the air temperature mild; the cats mellow. Work went well. Happy things happened yesterday. I went for a walk today, listening to instrumental music as slow yet rhythmical as a healthy heartbeat. When I came home, a rare-as-gold goldfinch paid a visit to the feeder in the bog garden.
But then I made a mistake. While the photos I snapped on my phone during my walk were downloading, I thought I’d scan the evening’s headline news.
To my despair, I read about angry people who were protesting the decision of their governors to close the commercial doors of their various states. The Michiganders, for example, blocked their capital city’s downtown core with trucks and cars. Unsatisfied with blocking roads that are probably routes commonly used by emergency vehicles, many protesters tumbled from their trucks into the Capitol forecourt. Yelling the favorite slogans of President Trump — “lock her up,” or a new one, “Heil Whitmer” — they demanded their right to free association.
Baying crowds in Ohio, North Carolina, Utah and Virginia (I’m sure I’ve missed some) repeated the performance with nuances of their own. And at the very same moment as they yelled for the right to risk their lives, all across their states, people were dying of Covid-19. People were teetering on the edges of life, unable to draw oxygen into their lungs, while outside, these folks enjoyed their free use of oxygen to complain … that they could breathe, I guess. I’m at a loss to know why they feel their livelihoods are worth more…
Worth more than the lives of their neighbors, their friends, their parents or children. Worth more than the lives of the people who sell them groceries, Chinese take-out and Confederate flags; police their streets and put out real fires. And worth so much more than the lives of the nurses and doctors who will now likely find themselves facing new cases of Covid-19… Who knows, perhaps in the very towns and communities these angry people hail from.
I try not to be bitter, or wish these hollering mobs meet a little tiny droplet of coronavirus from one of their yelling comrades. But I cannot understand how they forget that we spring from the same tree of life, and they are not entitled to cut off their neighbor’s branch because they wish to have more sunlight on their own blossoms.
Sometimes, the two commingle in spring beauty, springing from one stem.
Once the petals fall, all leaves are the same rich green…