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Category: Chamber Corner Chamber Corner
Published: 17 November 2021 17 November 2021

There is a tendency to look at life with a sense of impending doom, and see only the disaster and misery in adverse situations. As the saying goes, a pessimist is never disappointed.

I don't want to be a pessimist.

Certainly, we can look at COVID as a terrible disaster, a heavy blow to what had been a robust, thriving economy, a lost year for our children as they spent their days isolated from their friends and teachers, the normal course of their learning interrupted by closed schools and stringent mitigation policies. We can look at the death tolls and the infection rates, the overflowing hospitals, the empty stores, and conclude that the end is near, that civilization itself is on the brink of collapse.

Adversity also breeds opportunity. Sure, we've lived through almost two years of uncertainty, doubt, fear, and in many cases, grief. But these times, which have caused so many of us so much turmoil, have also produced innovation, and given ordinary people the chance to become heroes. The front-line health care workers who spent long hours laboring behind stifling, hot N-95 masks and full PPE have saved lives and reduced suffering.

Teachers have found new ways to deliver instruction to desperate students who, despite their insistence to the contrary, are hungry for learning. Grocery store workers, who have never occupied a place of prominence in the business world, were suddenly told that their jobs were not only important, but essential, and even in the darkest days of the pandemic, they continued to make sure that we had food to put on the table for our families. People from all walks of life, of all races and religions and sexual preferences, sacrificed their own comfort, not to protect themselves, but to protect others by wearing uncomfortable and inconvenient masks. Our best scientists worked around the clock to discover innovative new treatments to bring the virus under control.

It's easy to be cynical. It's easy to slip into a frame of mind that makes us receptive, even hopeful, for the idea that the end is near. But I challenge everyone to see the good that still exists in the world and in our community. Get vaccinated. Wear a mask when it's appropriate. We can have our differences and still work together. Let's be a little kinder and have more patience for one another. We are Americans, we are Grant County and together we can overcome these trying times. Our community is worth it. Let's do this together.