We all know times are different. Just a simple trip to get groceries elevates the stress. Some demand masks, others rebel against the mask. Either way when I go on a simple shopping trip, I cannot help but go back and forth between the feeling of the lostness of humanity and guilt of rebellion. My wife says she hates how nobody makes eye contact. Well, I can confirm if you do not wear a mask there are certainly some that make eye contact, and it is not a warm friendly feeling.

To me masks are the visible icon of the growing divide in our nation and culture. Truth can be hard to find with social media: the conspiracies flow like a volcano, they just seem to shoot up everywhere. They always have just enough truth to draw you in, but common sense says they’re not likely true. Then we have the standard media and the newspaper. But if I pay attention to what they say, I can see it’s editorial journalism. Sometimes it is done by purposely leaving out a critical part of the story. Sometimes it is just not asking the questions we all want answers to.

How do we live in such a precarious time and make good decisions? We are at a place and time where just to acquire our daily necessities and go to work to earn money, we are told is either putting our lives in danger or even killing someone else. That is a pretty big thing to hanging over your head.

I have concluded that whichever voice I choose to listen to will have both results and consequences. That means I need to know why I choose to listen. Will it be because I am emotionally tied to that voice? Hatred is a powerful voice. Will it be because I have thought things through and measured them against history and things that I have known to be true? I believe letting emotions rule tends to lean towards calling riots OK, leaving the street people addicted, and living in terrible conditions, and going along with the crowd because that is the easiest way to feel OK. Safety in numbers.

I have decided I will seek the voice of truth based on what things have always been true. I will build that truth into the foundation that I will stand on, and there I will stand. For me, it will begin at the beginning with the truth that we have been created by God, in God’s own image, because that is the only truth I find that tells me every one of us has infinite value that no one can take away. That truth was confirmed in our Constitution and I will do my best to live by it. I will measure wherever I can in every case, does this situation or opinion treat people in that matter. I have chosen my voice that will guide me! Have you?

Kevin McCoy

Enumclaw