Enjoy this time of choice to wear a mask. Look at people’s faces. Understand their feelings and communications expressed by glances and expressions. Enjoy connecting with our friends and neighbors in a way that’s been absent around here for over two years.
Every individual holds their own tolerance and concern regarding germ transmission. Consideration towards others helps us live together through these unique and confusing times. Reciprocating kindness stems from within and exists through cooperation; it cannot be forced through mandates.
Mandates cause divisions within community, business, and family. Mandates exclude, isolate, eliminate, banish, aggravate, repress, segregate, expose/identify… the list goes on. Mandates are not a solution that builds community.
Cooperation and understanding are better solutions. Listening, patience, faith, love, and empathy are things that encourage cooperation and understanding. Compare that list to what mandates bring, and you decide which choice is a better solution to meld differing opinions in our community.
Washington is still under a state of fear-based emergency, allowing the Governor to determine actions needed to “save lives.” Individual’s right to choose is better than mandates; mandates bring consequences for non-compliance, like loss of employment or fines on your business, and community erosion.
My outspoken advocacy for people’s free choice stems largely because many people are afraid to speak out against, or defy the mandate. They’re afraid of being singled out and socially or economically impacted as a result. They’re afraid of the consequences.
When mandates are imposed, we all suffer the consequences. We lose vitality of communication through expression and glances. We can’t tell if others are happy or frustrated. Communication between community drops way off, because masks make it hard to communicate; this impacts cooperation and understanding, degrading the fiber which binds our community.
Please reject any mandates. Let’s try cooperation and understanding the next time our Governor, President, or appointed health official demands we subject ourselves to mandate’s negative attributes.
Please work NOW to create a world of cooperation and understanding.
Matt Marinkovich
Friday Harbor
