June 18, 2021
I feel like I’m in a river, moving swiftly past the shore. There is no danger of going under; somehow I am effortlessly gliding along the surface, knowing the destination will be joyful.
But so many others are simply going about their lives and not even noticing the brilliant sparkle of the river.
I can see them, tiny figures in a toy landscape, but they never look to the swift river as it flows into the future.
*****
I think even people who aren’t very alert to the undercurrents of world happenings are scratching their heads over the impositions and waffling of governmental guidance during this apparently never-ending “health crisis.”
California is a giant petri dish. They – the deep state or whatever you wish to call them – keep taking their metaphoric eyedroppers of various toxins and poisons and dripping them here and there onto the gelatinous surface of the dish.
40-some million guinea pigs, let’s see how they react.
One big splash from their poison eyedropper was guidance from Cal/OSHA, which I believe has the force of law for state employers. Several weeks back this bureaucratic entity told employers that all of their employees must still wear masks if even one person working there is unvaccinated.
How would you like to be that one person?
*****
Today I see in the Santa Barbara newspaper that the bureaucrats have flip-flopped again. Now, in keeping with the state guidance in effect on June 15, and because of pressure from employers, Cal/OSHA has dictated that only unvaccinated people must continue to smother themselves in the workplace.
I skimmed the article – I can’t bear to read a lot of details about this ongoing theatre of the absurd – getting the gist of it, and then landed on a quote from a befuddled employer.
I paraphrase what he said: It will force employers to become even more of a mask police than they were. If everyone has to wear masks, everybody has to follow that rule. But if only some employees have to wear masks, the supervisor constantly has to be thinking, now, is it okay if that person doesn’t have a mask? Did they tell me they had the vaccine?
He also notes that it will potentially cause workplace friction because it creates two classes of people.
Ominously, he ends by noting that this is a way to “incentivize“ – what a deceptive word, why not call a spade a spade and say “coerce” – the unvaccinated to get the vaccine.
I see the setup. I see the continuation of the sleight of hand, the deception and the distraction.
The state won’t even have to push for a vaccine passport. Make employers uncomfortable enough, and they will soon be demanding it.
*****
I am still drifting down this gently murmuring river toward a joyous future, the one that I and so many know is not there, but here, inside our hearts.
I wave cheerfully to those on the shore. Somebody notices. It’s the befuddled employer! He comes to see what’s happening. He stretches out his foot and dips a toe into the water. He feels the glowing energy and the warmth and the love.
He glances back once at everything that makes up his life. His eyes have changed and he sees it differently now. All this divisiveness, masks or no masks, vaccine or no vaccine, it’s all absurd! What was I thinking to go along with it?
After standing for a few moments, he turns away from the old and wades in, onto the pathway to the new. On his way out the door, he tells employees, “Do what your heart tells you to do. And don’t try to impose your ideas on your fellows. Everyone gets to make up their own mind.”
Before long, they all are floating in the river of truth and beckoning to others still on the shore.
