There are books where the reader is allowed to make decisions for the characters. First a starter plot is laid out and then the choices - and their consequences - begin. From pauper to king, from citizen to wandering fugitive, sudden twists of fate, all is there, depending upon one's choices. Of course, there were those who peeked, looking to find out their future and change it if they could.
Many people state they would like to know the future, be able to make changes to it bychanging their decisions in the present, but will it? Or are the choices we make so engrained in our upraising, in our nurture and nature, that we will end up in the same position in a same future? Yet another possibility - if it is unchangeable, such as a disease, can I better prepare for it, make different decisions than if I had not known of my fate? All the what ifs, or couldas, shouldaa, wouldas of life.
Within our choices are the keys to our beliefs and character. What do we value? What comes first in our list of priorities? Where, when and how do we value others in our spheres of action and life? Here, my friends, is where today's world enters with a bang!!
The decisions of today are rife with life and death situations. It is definitely strange and at times a bit oppressive to sit home or pick outings very carefully, limit physical contact with others, friends and family included. For grandparents it is probably the most difficult thing to do, and for children of aging parents there is also worry - are they listening, isolating, following rules, prepared with supplies and food? It is exhausting to anyone at present as we live these newly changed lives.
So we make decisions. Our presumed leaders make decisions that affect ours. These decisions are not fully accepted by some and the whole condition and degreee of 'unknowingness' is compounded when our leaders make choices, rescind them, change them. This wishy-washy temperament leads us to feel insecure and questioning our own choices. Do we change them, go out, go visiting, take off those suffocating masks or get a supply of them, a better one, keep our distances andwhat happens if and when we do not? Aha! The $64,000 question.
At the bottom of it all is this: what are our values? How much do we value not only our lives, but the lives of others who could be adversely affected by our decisions? At these dangerous times, times of fracture in the country and yes, the world, what do we do? Do we trust our leaders, their supposed experts, their plans, their grasp of the future? Or do we question and try to chart our own way?
I cannot and do not trust this administration or in fact any Republican politician to make the proper decision, certainly not those that will keep me and mine safe and alive. They fail to understand the consequences of their choices and they choose to give in to violence and extremism, to groups of anti social people, to those who revive the ancient and sickening canards that the Jews are instigating this, wishing to kill all other than themselves, or that a certain group of people are dirty, carry disease. Finding echoes in your mind? Sending shivers down your spine? Rending your heart? It should do all those and more.
Choices have consequences. I understand the economy must open up at some time. I do. I know the struggles of those without employment, having been there, done that during my lifetime, but it must be done in a safe manner. This is not what is happening. People are behaving as thoughtless creatures. They must go to the beaches? They must hang together in groups at a party? They must remove those masks because they are annoying? No, they do not have to and should not, but they make their choices and the idiots upstairs make choices too, ones that are adversly affecting us in life and death futures and choices.
So what's a few thousands between friends? So what if the death toll now begins to rise again, negating our slowing it down through hard sacrifices? So what if the death toll rises by June to double that of today? What is the big deal between 1,500 and 3,000 mortalities, for after all, most were probably old or ailing or just weak! So therefore we can now remove the safety rules at nursing homes, for so what if thousands more die there? The callousness of these decisions, the inhumane negating of the value of life for and to others, the disregard of the grief of mourning friends and loved one, the members of a family ripped asunder from the fabric of their lives!
Thus we have the so casual raising of deaths that might befall us. First it was just a few, maybe three. Then it was okay, a few more, then 10,000 and not one to two million, and then the graph spiked - 20,000, 30,000, 50,000, 60,000 and now we are being urged to think positively, that 100,000, even 200,000 is better than a million, so be appreciative of the idiot's behavior and management?!
Choices. Those we make for ourselves. Those others make that affect us. Those choices that are life and death, for us as well as for others. We need to think carefully for now and the future. How do we need to prepare? We were woefully not this time around, engaged rather in a game of self delusion and magical thinking. If we closed our eyes to it, then it does not exist.
How wrong we were, how terribly wrong, and how incapable Trump has proven to be. How morally he is guilty of at least being an accessory to manslaughter before and after the fact, if not legally as well. He and his should be, for at their feet lay all the dead now piled up in funeral homes, buried in mass graves, or waiting their turn to be buried. Choose carefully before you choose to flout the safety rules. Choose wisely for it is not only your life in peril. Choose carefully this time around, a better and wiser person, one who cares for others rather than only opening his golf courses again and how quickly can he spin his own wrong words and misdeeds, poor choices, into something else!
To be well and stay safe we must think ahead. We must make the better choice. In the meanwhile, be careful.Weigh the choices.
Be well. Stay safe.
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