August 4, 2021
A few days ago…
I knew it was coming. Predictable as sunrise, and not nearly as pretty. And yet, I still stopped dead inside the door of CVS and stared at the clerk.
“What?”
“I said, you need to wear a mask, m’am.”
“Since when?”
“Since Saturday.”
“But there’s no mandate!”
“I know, but the CDC recommends…”
Without saying a word I turned on my heel and stomped back to the car. How am I going to get into this store next time without a mask? Or any other store, since it’s clear there will be a mandate soon?
I took a deep breath before motoring sedately to the bank, where one has never been required to wear a mask at the drive-through window.
*****
Yesterday, Santa Barbara County announced that an indoor mask mandate will begin on August 6. For everyone, vaccinated or not.
I looked at the headline in today’s paper and felt…disappointed, but not surprised. It seemed inevitable, since Los Angeles County already instituted their mandate, and Santa Barbara usually follows the lead of the big city to the south with respect to so-called Covid safety protocols.
However, I couldn’t work up much outrage about this new local mandate. It was as if it would have no impact on me whatsoever.
Which is nonsense. Of course it will impact me. I’ll have to put on a mask to enter any building where the employees are willing to break the law by enforcing an illegal mandate.
*****
Outrage is never the energy I want. I find it refreshing that some higher intelligence has stepped in and whisked away the exasperation I’ve been living with for the last nineteen months.
That intelligence gently murmurs, “You know, it’s really not about you, and you really needn’t get so riled up about things. It doesn’t affect you where it counts.”
Where it counts is at my Higher Self level, and mask mandates aren’t on my Higher Self’s radar. I can tell that my body’s on board, too. No unusual twinges or tweaks showing up to discomfit me.
*****
Is this a true shift, or temporary? Will the imposition of unconstitutional mandates rob me of peace, sovereignty, and equilibrium?
I was so sure that human beings would never again give up so much freedom on the say-so of blustering politicos, media mouthpieces, and pharmaceutical-industry-paid “scientists.”
Never again would we meekly obey what our own research tells us are unhealthy mandates that don’t do what the authorities insist they do, i.e., “keep us safe and healthy.”
Well, “never” has arrived, and I can’t muster up much interest in the whole rigmarole. I feel like I know the eventual outcome of our current world situation. And it hasn’t been sidetracked by the puny efforts of our little California county to repress the citizens once more.
Instead, I sense possibilities and potentials. Perhaps I’ll explore some other topics, since masking and mandates aren’t subjects that my inner writer wishes to wander through right now.
I always listen to that inner writer. Where she goes, I follow.
