LETTER: Pandemic lends perspective to what is important in life

To Ozaukee Press:

I thought I was doing a fairly good job of keeping myself together in these trying pandemic times until I lost it.

Rare March sunshine was brightening that revelatory day. It led me to hang my freshly washed sheets and pillowcases out on the clothesline to dry in a sunny breeze. I put a lawn chair out and was about to sit down and revel in the warm rays when I was accosted by a wave of poison in the air sprayed by lawn service workers four doors south of me. I was jolted into a rage. It didn’t help that a few days earlier neighbors on both sides of me had their lawn “serviced.” I stormed down the sidewalk toward the offending workers. The level of my rage scared me, but I felt this was a metaphor for all the chaos that is going on in our world.

We don’t need a monoculture, carcinogenic carpet surrounding our homes. We need a healthy dose of biologic diversity, not only in our lawns, but also in our human communities. We need more human diversity in our religions and governments putting forth a range of ideas and a genuine willingness to learn from one another. Especially, we all need to learn the skilled art of compromise.

We need fair maps, not gerrymandering that subverts opportunities for compromise. We need to be prudent in how we spend our money, not on excesses that pollute our earth, but in a way that is good for the environment and one another. We need equitable tax distribution where everyone pays their fair share, and we need to remove the status of corporations as citizens. We need leaders that promote unity, not division, who have deep concern for the environment and one another. We need to live more wisely from our hearts as well as our heads.

Life is paradoxical. Losing it can help us find our place in the world. Please vote as if all life depends on you. It does.  

Marcia Kaminski
Grafton