New Choices, New World

By Virginia Beck

The Water Planet. Image Credit: NASA

Truth is always stranger than fiction. Look at Kaua‘i and look at our world. No one could have predicted any of this.

History and wisdom from the past don’t fit this new world in which we find ourselves. Few could have imagined the pandemic. Few could have imagined it would last so long, be so difficult to stop.

Like a hurricane, it has swept away everything we knew. We will be changed forever. Many people have done all they can to protect us. The rest is up to us.

Approximately 24 percent of the island are not listening, and just doing their own thing.

Nearly 18 months later, it is time to wake up and realize that what the unvaccinated are doing doesn’t work.

It is tempting to believe that your rights extend everywhere. Even if we weren’t on this island, that is a false belief. We all depend on each other.

“If God wanted us to live one to a planet, he would have invented us that way.” A great proverb. Instead, we belong to a greatly populated planet, and a greatly populated island.

Preventing islandwide disaster takes all of us.

If you’re in a canoe with a hole in the bottom and it’s taking on water, it doesn’t matter what you think. It doesn’t matter what you say. It doesn’t matter what you think of your rights. If you don’t bail, we all sink.

With great sorrow, we are watching unneeded death, disease. And disabling illnesses,  affecting many we love. Feel for the babies and children. They didn’t ask for any of this. As adults we owe the future to these keiki.

Is this suffering necessary? This grief. This pain. No! we could have prevented much of it.

Freedom of self-expression does not mean we can do anything we want. The rules, respect, and laws of society allow us to work and live together for the good of all. Not some.

The values of humility, respect, and honoring others. Cherishing the children and the elders. Above all doing no harm. These are essential for us to teach our children and live as adults in harmony and the peace we all want so badly. Speak truth gently.

What good will remain from your actions? What will the impact be on the entire community?

We discipline ourselves and our children to choose the harder good over the easier wrong.

Remember who we are as an island, a community, respecting the health of the community. The visitors are not the problem. The community is sharing sickness with each other.

Wear a mask and get vaccinated. No polio, see? No smallpox, see? And one day, no COVID and better prevention of childhood disease, disability and death.

As one who survived many diseases that continue to plague developing nations, from childhood on, I have seen the good that can come from vaccinations, and the evil that comes from variants.

Each unvaccinated body becomes an opportunity for the virus which only wants to mutate in order to survive. This one is more than 1000 percent more contagious. Do you really think natural immunity is enough?

Please remember that climate disaster is a global event, and so is the pandemic. Choose wisely for the future generations.

Aloha makes us great.

• Virginia Beck, NP and Certified Trager® Practitioner, offers Wellness Consultation, Trager Psychophysical Integration and teaches Malama Birth Training classes. She can be reached at 635-5618.