The Bling Moment

Summer will be soon push through the rain that mists the streets outside. Storms slash across the country, but the ice is slowly melting and the birds are singing. Nature is perfectly beautiful.

Sitting indoors, in a café again, with a steaming coffee again feels so, decadent. Un-mittened fingers clicking on the keyboard and music floating below the live human conversations. Nostalgic memories of a pre-covid world. No zoom fatigue here. Pure, vibrating life energies. A sense of normality in an unpredictable new world.

Vaccinated or not, our masks are off. We are sucking in the fresh air of perceived liberation. For a breath, we will ignore the incoming wave of chaos that is coming due to the ridiculous lack of a unified Federal platform for vaccine validation records. The real vs the fake. Needless to say, the touted “honour system” is just plain stupid. Makes one wonder how our hard-earned tax dollars are being spent. Pretty sure it’s not in the Planning Department.

As we demand our individual rights, where is the line drawn to include the rights of the functioning society in a global world?

Americans love a challenge and this one is proving less than expected. State by state vaccine cards are so amateur, it’s not even fair to call it a challenge. Anyone with laptop and printer can pop these out in a New York minute. Am sure boxes of them have been “falling off the back of trucks”. Buying them on the internet is still cheap, but not as cheap as getting the shot. That’s free. It is going to be interesting watching how summer travel outside the US balances the cost of an economic revival against lives and new spreads of Covid. Make sure those tickets are refundable, just in case. The EU recently issued guidelines for its new digital Covid passport. Meantime, Americans are stuck in the mud of yet another disorganized mess as airlines struggle to demand vaccination proof in the howling mayhem of private “rights” and misquoted HIPA regulations.

As we demand our individual rights, where is the line drawn to include the rights of the functioning society in a global world? Like it or not, we will always, going forward, be in this “all together”. If someone sneezes, we all catch a cold.

How quickly we return to “normal”. A life we lambasted a mere 6 months ago. The workers of America are again cloaked in invisibility. “Heroes of 2020” are now “lazy scoundrels” with outlandish demands for living wages and environments not toxic to their souls. They have selfish requests for common respect and recognition as equal humans. The audacity! We do not clap for them at night anymore…

Capitalist America is heroically fighting back in defence of their profit margins. They march across social media parading as vengeful angels protecting our economy. Get to work America, the dream is over! Like Exxon, they may be generally, a bit slow on the uptake. Fossil fuels and employee abuse are so “pre-pandemic”. The desire for a sustainable planet and human dignity have been unmasked by the virus that continues to plague our planet.

As Millennials age themselves out, Gen Z’s, tougher and smarter, are not willing to pay the price of the old “normal”. Damn right too. It’s not anarchy, socialism, or any other “ism”. It’s about personal dignity and life on this endangered planet. We had paradise, they might be inheriting hell. Go Gen Z! I sit here, basking in the momentary joy of sitting in a coffee shop again. Of feeling almost Normal. A shade of sadness crosses my heart. A twinge of guilt for this normal moment. There is so much at risk. Is empathy so hard?

Is that $1.00 grimy piece of paper worth more than a life? Money is only as powerful as our belief in it. Our collective belief. Bit Coiners know this and banks tremble lest we, as The People understand and act on this. Change the power dynamics of being thoughtless consumers. Convenience can be so soothing and, distracting. Amazon, our new world government, is built on this concept. Imagine what would happen if, for only two days, no one bought Anything. Two days. Just, two days. The fridge has leftovers and the dog can share. Imagine…

I am musing this thought. My powerful question. Can these Un-united States unite long enough to save this beautiful country and planet? My belief in humanity is wobbly these days.

If there is a He/She God in play, He/She/Whatever, just sent me an Angel. He comes disguised as the Bling Fairy. His halo is a faded, yellow baseball cap. I am blind-sided again by the erratic nature of human goodness. Myron Boyer is 72 years old and has an eclectic assortment of brooches pinned all across his tee-shirt.

He found that giving happiness was addictive.

I am distracted from the virtual world to the current reality. I am curious. Ha! What IS his story? He asks me to pick a favourite from his shirt display. A pin of a lady painting stands out to me. Smiling he plucks it off his shirt and hands it to me. I have been spontaneously “gifted”. It seems Myron Boyer, aka The “Bling Fairy” has spent over 6 years giving away sparkly pins to strangers. Not only does he give them away to anyone he feels “needs a little sparkle in their day”, but he spends his own money buying them. Turning dirty dollars into moments of happiness to strangers. Myron began his sparkling after the death of a close friend from leukaemia and never stopped. Pinning strangers with bits of hope. He found that giving happiness was addictive. The Myron’s of the world are proof that we still may be worth saving. That the human heart is still more powerful than the dollar.

As we dash to the exit signs and embrace being “outside” again let us not forget the hard lessons of 2020. All people deserve kindness. All our lives matter. Human dignity is Not for sale for the lowest wages. A smile costs nothing but brings enormous profit. If we are to survive on our lovely planet, we truly are, all in this together. Bring some bling into a stranger’s life today. Humanity requires it. 💜

Kvk05-2021 ©