Originally posted in July 2020 on one of my social media accounts. Modified and edited for further clarity.
Generally I use social media to post silly things to brighten someone’s day, or to share my artwork because hey if I liked making it then somebody might like looking at it, or to share links to other stuff I’ve done, or to articles that I think are interesting, or even occasionally to resources that I think will help people, but mostly to post silly things to make people laugh. My general philosophy is, “Make at least one person laugh every day — because if they were having a good day, you still made it better. But if they were having a bad day, at least they had that one laugh.”
But today is my birthday, and it’s now been exactly four months since I started working from home, and I work for a company that promotes free speech, so fuck it. Today I’m letting it out:
This whole thing sucks.
I don’t want to be stuck inside. I don’t WANT to tell my friends no you can’t come over because I can’t trust that I am not sick and just not showing symptoms yet. I don’t WANT to accuse my friends of maybe being sick and not showing symptoms yet. But I have to, because I want as many of us to make it out the other side of all this as possible.
COVID-19 doesn’t give a shit about your political alignments or your nationality or your race or your thoughts on vaccinations or your religion. It also doesn’t give a shit about mine. It is a virus that goes into a body and reproduces by destroying the host. Left or right, your political leaders will not save you. Your religious leaders will not save you. Your YouTube conspiracy theorists will not save you. Your money will not save you. Your God will not save you. None of those things will save me, either.
The only thing that’s going to save you or me or anybody, is doing the best you can to avoid coming into contact with this virus. Wearing a covering over your nose and mouth isn’t the be-all end-all of this, but it’s the easiest and cheapest and fastest way to stop yourselves and others from coming into contact with ANY virus.
And look, if I’m wrong? If this IS all just a hoax? If this is the biggest global conspiracy of all time? Then nothing happens. We all wear masks for a while and look silly and then things go back to “normal” (whatever the hell that word even means), and we all just learned that decent retail workers and food servers are the actual backbone of the economy and not the Stock Market, and most businesses can probably have smaller offices and their employees can work from home more often.
But if I’m right, and there is a virus out there killing people and we keep not wearing masks? Then the virus fucking wins, and we all die.
Obviously I don’t want everyone to die. I don’t want ANYONE to die. If you haven’t figured out that at my core, I want every single person (and most animals, but fuck cockroaches) to live a full, safe, happy life, regardless of geographic location or genetic makeup or gender identity, or whatever, then you haven’t been paying attention to anything that I have said, ever.
All of the problems in the world can be boiled down to greed and hate and fear. Greed is the fear of not having enough, hate is fear of the unknown, fear is the root of all negativity.
“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration.”
Total. Obliteration.
In conclusion: If you are not doing SOMETHING to try and make the world a better place for every human life (and most animal lives, but, seriously, fuck cockroaches), then I want you to read the next three words very carefully:
Change.
Your.
Life.
Happy birthday to me.