The first time I came across an article about anti-maskers, I thought it had to be satire.
“There’s no way that’s real.” I responded almost involuntarily, all but certain that it was fake news. “No reasonable person would be that way, right?”
The very idea that an educated, responsible adult human being could be living through the greatest public health crisis in our lifetime, witnessing the swift and terrifying loss of life—and come up with a ideological stance that made protecting themselves and others, through perhaps one of the simplest and least invasive methods some sort of personal oppression—seemed patently ludicrous.
Now 18 months and 600,000 American lives into this tragedy, watching people having massive house parties and cramming themselves into restaurant booths and vowing not to get a vaccine and essentially pretending everything is normal, it’s easy to find reasons to be disheartened at the callousness and ignorance we seem to afflicted with; to lament how little so many people care about their neighbors and how selfishly they see the world.
I’ve watched them armed on capitol steps insisting that making small concessions in a pandemic is some leftist conspiracy that infringes on their rights.
I’ve seen them screaming at exhausted, underpaid store clerks trying to do a job they never imagined would have placed them on the front lines of a life and death culture war.
I’ve witnessed them peddle harmful, baseless conspiracy videos on social media, that any child with Internet access and a shred of critical thinking could have refuted in thirty seconds.
I’ve watched them parade around without masks in the name of God and country, seen them stop traffic and berate nurses and spit at strangers in coffeeshops when asked to provide a very base level of humanity—and it has been an absolute tragedy in the middle of an already tragic season.
This week I witnessed a group of parents with children in tow, burning masks and celebrating as if they had defeated some oppressive, malevolent adversary, and I once more realized how broken our nation is and how starved for humanity we are becoming.
But today, I’m choosing not to dwell on those people.
Today I’m fixing my gaze on those who rose to the moment, those who became a better version of themselves, those whose humanity would not be denied.
Today I want to sit with my gratitude for you.
Thank you.
Thank you for wearing a mask.
Thank you for keeping your distance at the grocery store.
Thank you for staying home, as difficult as it has been.
Thank you for cancelling your long-awaited birthday party.
Thank you for only buying the toilet paper you needed.
Thank you for showing kindness to doctors and nurses.
Thank you for sharing factual news about the virus.
Thank you for not saying “Only older people are affected.”
Thank you for not ridiculing experts and worshipping ex-presidents.
Thank you for teaching your children about the greater good.
Thank you for remembering that this life isn’t just about you.
Thank you for being a human.
Thank you for making so many small and great sacrifices on behalf of people you may never know or meet but whose lives you may have saved. They will still be able to see their grandchildren and attend their daughter’s wedding and create their masterpiece and launch a business and be there for the people who love them—or simply breathe easily in this day which they have gotten to see, all because you chose to remember that we are all here together, that we depend on one another and are responsible to one another.
Your goodness saved them.
It saved my mom.
It saved my favorite college professor.
It saved my neighbor.
And in a real way, it saved me, too.
In a year that showed me the cavernous depths of the cruelty and ugliness and stupidity human beings are capable of, you reminded me that decent, compassionate human beings still inhabit this place, which at times has been difficult to remember—and on many days that assurance has been the thing that saved me from sinking beneath the surface of the sorrow or crumbling beneath the the weight of the grief.
As I watch so many cram themselves into restaurants and shun vaccines and burn masks, and now over a year into this madness still choose not to show an elemental level of regard for the human beings they live alongside—I hold the deepest gratitude for you: the maskers, caregivers, science-lovers, damn-givers, helpers, healers, and empathetic souls who have quite literally kept people alive when so many others could simply not be bothered.
If we run into one another out there, you won’t see it beneath my mask but I will be smiling because I know there are still good humans here.
Thank you.
