I am Tired of Pretending to Be Kind
Anti-vaxxers are testing our limits
Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash
Outwardly, I am a kind person.
I try to treat everyone with the utmost respect and kindness, and for the most part “outwardly” I succeed. I try not to talk about kindness. I just try and be kind.
The essence of kindness, however, is deeply personal. What matters is what is in your heart, on the inside, and only you can know. These days it’s here where I fall short.
I fall short because, in my heart, I detest what anti-vaxxers are doing, and I am not kind about it.
In Canada, where I live, my educated guess says there is a hardcore 10% of the population that are anti-vaxxers. Some of this small group have had their children vaccinated for mumps, measles, rubella, diphtheria, polio and a few other illnesses, but they refuse the COVID vaccination.
In the last couple of weeks, a very small contingent of this group has been protesting at hospitals across the country. Their presence outside of hospitals screaming, jeering, honking at health care workers and visitors alike strains all credulity.
How dare they subject the people taking care of COVID patients inside the hospital — the majority of those who are unvaccinated — to this treatment? How dare they protest at hospitals where nurses and doctors are crumbling under the pressure their anti-vax decision puts on them?
Where I live, health care workers are mandated to be fully vaccinated by October 15 or lose their jobs. And yet, the anti-vaxxers — today reportedly the only people occupying ICU beds in the province where I live — protest.
Health care workers are professionals, and I am sure all their patients get the best care. But they are human beings, and I can’t help but think they must also feel disgusted and resentful.
We are also in the middle of an election campaign in Canada, and a vocal handful of people have been showing up at the campaign stops of the Prime Minister. A few dozen people are shouting slurs at Liberal Party volunteers, supporters and the Prime Minister as he shakes hands with people or addresses them. They are a small number, but they get copious press coverage for protesting vaccines and masks.
It is hard to remain kind towards those who are causing a surge in COVID cases and hospitalizations. It is hard to accept their stunning selfishness. It is incredible that they don’t believe in science (or “did their own research”) or don’t understand that they protect themselves and others — including their children — if they get vaccinated. How dare they say it is their choice to get a vaccination or not when that choice endangers others, including the youngest and most vulnerable?
It’s hard to remain kind towards the individuals working overtime to promulgate frightening and false theories about vaccines that have been safely administered to many millions on this planet.
One big lie involves the messenger RNA (mRNA) in two COVID vaccines being administered and that it somehow rewrites or changes your DNA. There are many places to get good information on how the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines work, but the idea that mRNA could change your DNA is preposterous.
All this brings me back to kindness. Can I ever feel kind towards anti-vaxxers? How do I find a path back to my outwardly and inwardly kind self? There is nothing about how I feel that is helpful or positive for myself or the bigger problem of dealing with this pandemic. Therein lies the problem.
The truth is I am searching for an answer to this burden of unkindness and animosity.
Meanwhile, I hope the protesters will go home where they and the rest of us will be safer.
They should also save their breath…because I think they are going to need it.
…
If anyone is interested in what sparked this story, please read this excellent article, a guest essay in the New York Times by Rabbi David Wolpe. It’s not about kindness. It is about forgiveness — what to do to be forgiven, how to forgive and the burden of not. And true to someone who has preached many sermons, it offers facts, advice, inspiration and hope.
By writing about the anger and discouragement preventing me from being kind, I hoped to find some resolution for myself. I have not.
I remain burdened by the feeling that we could have done better if we had all pulled together and helped one another.