Get over it.

Enough.

Lockdown is not easy. Victoria is in day 202 of lockdown since February 2020.

However, I have nothing to complain about.

Many are suffering real and lasting consequences, but I am not among them, so I won’t complain. I suffer only inconvenience, and most of that is mild. So tonight I am thankful for my helping of irritation and mild inconvenience, in the absence of much, much more. I am willing to fully embrace my restricted movement and life for the greater good. I think it is a fragile and wanting ego that sees a temporary limit on physical movement and gathering, for what are plainly and obviously good reasons, as an assault on their actual freedom.

I mean, for fuck’s sake. How delicate is your sense of liberty if it can be seriously dented by a public health order? It’s not forever. How ignorant do you have to be of the state of the wider authoritarian world to actually think your liberty is under serious assault? This is the epitome of a first world problem.

Why not turn your mind and efforts to something that is actually wrong with Australia? The God of the Starving Dog knows that there is enough actual corruption, incompetence, injustice and plain old bad governance in this country to be worried about, without beating some ridiculous individualistic, self-obsessed and self-serving drum about COVID restrictions.

The selfishness and short-sightedness of all this both bores and sickens me in equal measure. “Lockdown protest”. Fuck off.

Of course, I still have a job and an income, which undoubtedly colours my perceptions. Who knows.

Tonight I meditate in the pursuit of ‘right mind’, something I only know a little bit about. I am a bit too tired to share even the little I know right now, but it is a lovely concept, and like much of meditation fodder the enactment of equanimity and acceptance embodied within it is liberating.

So I will put this little late night rant aside, and choke back the rising bile I feel when I ponder the shortsighted reactions to sensible public health policy, however flawed it might be, and retire.

Post edit Sunday 22 August 2021

Today I drove further than five kilometres, breaking the Public Health Order rules for Victoria. I did not leave or intend to leave my vehicle so did not endanger the public’s health. The police caught me, stopped me and cautioned me. It was all very polite. I remain as inconsistent as ever and life goes on.

-Marcus B