Category: covid19

Throwing Stones

Violent acts should never be an option. This is as true now as it was at the dawn of human existence. The trouble is that we humans never learn our lessons. Why is this? Not even Buddha, Moses or Jesus could rid us of this scourge. To be human is to suffer. God needs us to understand the relationship of ignorance and insecurity in order to reduce any and all societal brutality.

The dragons of Ignorance and Insecurity

Consumerism has contributed to our misunderstanding of this relationship. While it’s true that money and stuff cannot create happiness, it is also true that money and stuff build walls between us. Clearly defining our needs and wants can release our society from the suffering that leads us to violence. But should it be the individual or the collective that defines these needs and wants?

During Covid-19 we saw what happened to the supply chain. The unintended consequences of “shutting down” to reduce virus spread limited certain industries from doing business as usual. Needs for personal protective equipment, medicine and paper products were limited. Certain in-patient and out-patient services were postponed or cancelled. Many events and ceremonies were postponed or cancelled too. During this time we were all stuck in our homes consuming all sorts of things: food, alcohol, drugs, social media, news and online goods. Where was the happiness?

In the above example we can see that individual needs were determined by the collective…Everyone had to go along to get along. If you didn’t follow the rules that were set by politicians then you were considered an outcast. It didn’t matter if you needed to run your in-person business, visit a dying relative or have an outpatient health screening because these normal needs were now considered selfish wants set by a narrative of fear. A collective ignorance associated with denying these individual needs was allowed to develop. A person could be shamed and even shunned based upon many unreasonable factors. I believe that the Covid 19 experience also damaged our emotional maturity resulting in a collective insecurity.

Insecurity arises when ignorance is allowed to grow. Effective communication and information help to dissipate ignorance. When one party will not converse with another other party, the insecurity of that non-communicative party develops into activism which can lead to violent acts. This is true when the ignorance and insecurity is between two individuals, between an individual and a group or between groups.

But the worst violence that occurs is within an individual’s own heart and mind…When this happens, no person or community is spared from the consequences. It takes a deeply disciplined Godly approach to solve one’s own ignorance and insecurity. Emotional maturity depends on this discipline. The true sin is to never understand or comprehend one’s own shortcomings.

Activism that exhibits violence is an injustice to all. We need to look inward before wanting to cast that stone. This is true for all things happening in our liberty minded society today. Oppression is a collectivist scapegoat used to mask ignorance and insecurity. God does not want us to fall pray to it!

Changes

Remember when everything and everyone stayed the same? Of course not! Every day and every hour of every day generates newness…some good, some bad and some you won’t understand until much later.

Change can be based upon decisions made or chance. Always constant yet never consistent.

Take the scourge of a chance cancer diagnosis. Something changed in my body and it simply wasn’t wanted, yet I have zero personal control (I think) over its existence. For me, the intrusion affected my right eye orbit. For almost a year I knew that something wasn’t feeling right because I would develop more fluid excretion in my right eye area than in my left eye area. It was manageable, but noticeably not normal. Even my annual optometrist appointment hadn’t noticed anything out of the ordinary affecting my vision. I’ve been nearsighted since around age nine.

How silly was this!

Enter COVID-19…How the world changed with this novel viral invasion! But what made this change even more dramatic was the creation of a vaccine to combat its spread. This “cancer” on society was among us and was threatening to kill us! To this day we still haven’t wrestled with the facts of how it occurred. Nonetheless, we all had to choose our own course of action to deal with it. I chose to take the vaccine.

Imagine my surprise when about a month after taking the vaccine my lower right eyelid started to protrude outwards! My PCP referred me to a local ophthalmologist who I wouldn’t get to see for almost three months. Meanwhile I was working my typical busy season at my bridal sewing business, trying not to skip a beat because it was extra, extra busy from all the postponed weddings from the year before due to COVID…a good example of how change is never consistent!

By September I had the biopsy and the diagnosis, and by December I was done with the radiation treatments. Over the next year my eyelashes fell out from my right eyelid (two times), but the treatment worked! Now more than three years later thankfully I am cancer free but have developed a cataract in my right eye, a probable condition from radiation treatment. At least my eyelashes have come back.

Changes…I’ve retired from my sewing business. This cataract has made working more difficult until I can correct it. This will take a few more months. Always constant and never consistent.

I’m still unsure about how my cancer developed. I’ve never smoked, I’m not on any medication, I’m active and not overweight. Is there a change I can make in my lifestyle to prevent another diagnosis of cancer? Maybe. I’ve decided to make some changes to my food choices: more organics, less seed oils, more olive oil, and green tea instead of coffee. There is a chance that my gut health contributed to the cancer in that specific location. How crazy is that? And if food choices can contribute to health changes, can the medicine we consume do the same, good and bad?

Cheers to life and all the changes there in. May God watch over us and keep us in his mercy.

Is Less Really More?

Empty store shelves, back-ordered web purchases, higher food costs, increasing energy prices, slower services, and hours cut back at your favorite restaurant or coffee shop…How are you adjusting?

I remember several household habits from my childhood quite distinctly:

– Keeping lights off in a room that you were not using;

– Dad cleaning the dishes by hand;

– Mom giving the hair cuts;

– One bathroom for a household of seven people being do-able;

– Cans of vegetables being stored and rotated in the basement;

– Re-using or re-purposing plastic food containers, brown paper grocery bags, wrapping paper, news paper, milk jugs, etc…

I also remember as a family we would go out to eat on rare occasions, get along with one car just fine, and communicate with one home phone. I am a child of parents who grew up during the depression. The 1970’s weren’t the 1930’s, yet hard times did make their appearance none the less. Learning how to adapt to hard times is a skill not easily acquired if you have never been exposed to hard times. Our current inflation is a good reminder that hard times can make an appearance no matter what the circumstances.

Sometimes habits or behaviors from one generation transfer to the next…Obviously all the above household habits are healthy habits and I have used the experiences at times in my own adulthood. Reduce, reuse, recycle therefor comes naturally to me as does planning for one trip to grocery shop for the week and minimizing the stuff I WANT to have as opposed to the stuff that I NEED to have. But I really don’t think that my example has been adopted by my children all that well. My children have not been spoiled, but I think the consumer-driven era that they have grown up with can really spoil the generations of its time.

It’s a Woolworth vs an Amazon mentality. Either you can walk about a mile or so to get your basics or you can sit and have many different boxes and bags delivered on your doorstep. It’s a Main Street vs a Corporate Monstrosity mentality. Either you want to be in person with your community or you want a socially distant social media pseudo relationship. When people need a web device to direct their day to day experiences, then I suppose there may be less aggravation and more time for other experiences. But when people must use a more “hands on” and in-person approach to daily life, then one might find that less consumerism is actually required perhaps because the physical sensations are more satisfying. Sure, there may be more frustrations when you can’t find exactly what you want, but that can happen at Woolworth or Amazon. Some of us are just that picky lol! The ability to curb frustration is a cornerstone of healthy character building.

I believe that the Covid19 pandemic has really shed some light on this topic. Locking people down in their homes has driven the web-based consumer appetite to higher levels. This is obvious given the billions of dollars that the owners of these platforms have amassed. Lock-downs have also reinforced the notion that physically distancing from others is a medical necessity to minimize the spread of germs, but is there more to maintaining a healthy immune system? Of course there is! The average physically fit person on zero medications is a virus’s worst nightmare. Being around people when you are a healthy, fit individual builds immunity for the whole environment…Immunologists have known this for decades if not centuries.

A society that emulates a place of scarcity is similar to putting healthy, fit individuals in hiding from a virus…Wealth (similar to immunity) is not allowed to spread. In fact, hoarding can happen. But when a society embraces abundance, it builds wealth (i.e. immunity) for everyone in the environment and is almost “contagious”, but in a good way…Wealth and giving among and between individuals spreads! An individual in the USA always has the choice in an abundant environment to cut back on their consumption either to save money for the things that they wish to redirect the money for or to maintain a perspective of “reduce, reuse, recycle” (less can become more). However an individual living in an environment of scarcity will never be able to improve the quality of their consumption (less is always less). We should never allow the elitists in government to control our marketplace by imposing their will on our choices and our freedom of movement.

I want my children to live in a country where there is limitless abundance and opportunity for all individuals. A country that uses the framework of God’s Laws to help guide their choices and the Rule of Law to help hold them responsible. LESS control imposed by government IS MORE freedom for we the people!

Shrewd Awakenings: Our Culture of Non-Conformity

The Covid 19 pandemic has helped the USA (AKA America) to discover its founding roots, and Liberty is stronger than ever!

I don’t know what some of these governors were thinking when they implemented controls on what could and could not be done to purchase specific items, worship in various socially distant ways, or enjoy the outdoors…But when those thoughts became actual rule, people rightly stood their ground to confront the tyranny.

This is exactly how the fight for civil rights began. Individuals must have dominion over there autonomy otherwise government actions will be encouraged to encroach on their personhood. Our Creator made us whole beings in order to experience a life rich with wonder, joy, risk and pain…This is the Love that is God, not the protection that is the mommy state.

In the USA the government can give certain rights, but the government itself does not have the civil right of a tyrant because our representatives are elected to make sure the balance of power leans on the side of the people, each of whom have the responsibility of their own actions. One, two or thousands of individuals can protest the government when their Constitutional rights are infringed upon, that’s why we have a Constitution to list these rights out specifically!!

This pandemic is quite a bit different than the pandemic of 1918. A century ago we had the radio and the press to inform the masses, yet very little was known about viruses and their transmission. A News of the World report from November 1918 lists the following as recommended precautions against contracting the flu: “Wash inside nose with soap and water each night and morning; force yourself to sneeze night and morning then breath deeply; do not wear a muffler; take sharp walks regularly and walk home from work; eat plenty of porridge.” Hygiene practices were much different with indoor plumbing and sanitation being mostly for the wealthy. And there were far fewer hospitals not to mention life saving technology.

Today’s pandemic is brought to you by the World Health Organization. The WHO’s primary role is to direct international health within the United Nations’ system and to lead partners in global health responses. This organization has been politicized because of various governmental influences and funding. It is very American to question the authority of the WHO. If America is basing it’s health informatics on information coming from this organization, and this organization recommends tracking the health of EVERYONE on the planet…would we do this? Of course not!! But then again, if a simple majority of our population in America is sufficiently frightened of what “could be” then perhaps the government would implement this authoritarian system, and if some of us “opt out” does this add to the polarization in our country? I think some of our government leaders would just love for this to happen because it would reinforce their need to be in charge and force compliance…Sound familiar? Isn’t this what is currently happening in various communities in regard to covid19?