Make Conscious Choices
First I wanted to start today's post off by saying I hope you all are staying happy and healthy. I decided to take last week off of posting because it was Father's Day. I know things in the country are starting to phase back into normal here, in some places that has not had the best results, but that is not my point. Tomorrow I head back into the office after working from home for just over three months. I am excited to get back into a somewhat normal routine on one hand, but on another I am nervous to go back to exposing myself and the ones I live with, but my bosses have made sure to have a plan in place we are all comfortable with. It is nice to have a job that my feelings are considered. I am sure during this pandemic a lot of people can not say the same. With all of that being said I wanted to take some time to talk about choices today.
This page is no stranger to talking about the choices we all make as individuals and the effect they can have on others. I am going to really show my nerd side here and bring up a videogame I have certainly mentioned in the past: Undertale. I am not going to go too into details on the game's plot itself here, but the game overall depends on the choices you make. To get the most happy ending you have to choose to not hurt anything you come across and take a handful of steps that lead to that ending. If you kill even one enemy during your journey it completely alters the ending of your game and it is impossible to get the true pacifist route completed. On the other hand you can choose the exact opposite route, killing every enemy you come across. That is the genocide route. Each route has completely different stories and endings. One small choice has the ability to alter the outcome of the game. I think it is a lovely story on the pacifist route, and the genocide route is equally as horrific. I completed both in the last few weeks and I can say I much prefer the pacifist route. But my entire point of bringing this game up is to show that if small choices can completely alter the lives of fictional characters, they surely can have the same effect in real life.
Most importantly over everything I want to do my part to spread the word that our choices, both big and small, can play a huge roll into the lives of not only ourselves but others as well. If you are at the grocery store and there are only two loaves of bread left and you decide to buy both, even though you only need one, that could have taken that food directly off the table of someone who was desperate for it. Sometimes we drive a little recklessly because we are running late for work and your actions can very much have consequences for the other drivers on the road. Overall it is important to realize that you are not always the only person you are making decisions for both directly and indirectly. Sure, not everything has to be complicated and a lot of things will not necessarily have that kind of domino effect, but why not just be conscious of others?
Maybe I am beating a dead horse here, but our choices have very much been reflecting the world around us lately. I understand people are on different sides of the argument when it comes to dealing with this pandemic, but I think it is clear what the choices of some people in certain states have lead to. Recklessly carrying on as if nothing is happening is causing a lot of people to get sick again. I also have to say that I understand that people are very much for or against having to wear a mask in public, and some are making that choice to disregard the advice and not wear one. What people are not understanding is that choice is not just effecting you. You are not keeping only yourself safe by wearing one, but the rest of the people around you as well. I am sure someone is reading this thinking about all the data showing it might not even be helping at all. What I say to that is even if it isn't helping anything at all, how much of an inconvenience can having to wear one really be causing you? I am not here to cause a debate on wearing them at all. I am just hoping to make sure people are aware that these are the kinds of choices that could be making or breaking this pandemic. This is a pretty dark way of putting it, but choose the pacifist route over the genocide route.
I want you to try and picture a world where everyone is conscious of others. Everyone worked together for the benefit of the whole, not just as an individual. I realize this is physically impossible but humor me here. If every last person had social distanced and stayed home other than for essentials the way we should have this pandemic would likely be next to gone by now. If everyone did that back in March then we would have most likely been back to our normal routines a lot sooner than now. Really take some time to think about that. You may not think your actions have that much power, and individually you are probably right, but add them all together as small pieces of one big whole and you have this massive effect. All I am asking you to do is consider this when you make choices. Things have been pretty heavy really for the last three months, so I think I am going to shake things up a little and lighten the mood next week with a poetry book review. Until then I hope you all stay happy and healthy and safe!
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