If our society does not work to bind the wounds that have been inflicted over the past 2 years, surviving another round of the pandemic may cause more mortal wounds.
What the people of Hawaii did, in this case, is demand what we wanted, not demand that with circumstances changing we order our leadership to adapt And so we are left with rules that don’t make sense anymore, but will still be enforced because, we as the people of Hawaii, back in November 2020, asked him too.
And finally, issues of the quality of education, our mental health crisis, and society’s inability to lick social ills like homelessness and crime, will continue to be problems. Just because the media or the watercooler talk don’t bring up these topics does not mean they’ve been solved.
Aloha ʻOe 2021.
Although there are a lot of people who have a lot to say about Councilwoman Tupola’s decision not to be vaccinated, she puts that to the side and discusses, instead, the core issue of our government’s actions. The fact remains, regardless of whether you are vaccinated or not, the proclamations are still imposed by a small group of people, with very little input by the public, of which they then don’t have a choice of whether to follow it or not.
Can you imagine the internal and external pressure that comes with being a motivational speaker who is depressed? Can you imagine the pressure of having to be in tip-top condition every other day/night as there are hundreds and hundreds of gigs you need to be “on” for even though you’re human, flawed, and struggle with depression? What if the day you’re supposed to perform for 70,000 people you have a down day? It’s not possible. You have to perform. You have to nail it. It’s what I do. I don’t get to control the date on the calendar they book me for any more than I get to control the way I’m feeling on that day. For me, I’ve learned strategies, tactics, and mindsets that help me perform at a high level no matter what the day brings mentally, because I’ve been trained by the United States military to bring my “A” game no matter what. My self-taught training as an entertainer and a professional speaker also has given me a toolbox full of things I can do to be able to give to my audiences the best Mark I can possibly muster on the day of the performance.
But even all that is just masking the root of the problem. I learned that this week.
Now if one replaces “star” with “vaccine card”, and play the film, would we see the same result as the film? The likelihood is no because we wouldn’t stand for a society in which access is divided by who has a card or not. But considering (by this humble writer’s opinion) a proven lack of imagination by our government leadership during this whole saga, everything must be considered as a plan like this is rolled out.
Now it is hoped that this yielding to reality – symbolized by the Olympics – will develop more plans to both keep opening up while developing more techniques to deal with the virus, into the future.
AND NOW we are being told that the saga might be over. As this is written, letters are going out from employers informing employees that they should plan to return to the office and that social norms that were created to address the crisis will be rescinded with a timeline to match.
With the news coming out of this, all one needs to do is go on social media to see how widespread people’s opinions are of this development. Some are enthusiastic, never seeing the event as a permanent thing and never allowing the changes to change them.
Thanks to the vaccine, which we were told going back to the beginning of the COVID saga was the only real solution to solving the crisis, this relaxation can come with confidence. And it’s this confidence that our state government needs to start expressing should it want to play the role of supporter of society, rather than the oppressor.
So you’d think that King’s would “get the message” and be a good neighbor and just do what the authorities are “strongly suggesting”
Nope.