We Should Be Proud Of Ourselves

The State of Oregon announced yesterday that it would be lifting the indoor mask mandate before the end of March, and that K-12 schools will no longer be required to enforce a mask police as of March 31st.  According to experts, the hospitalization rate should be down well below critical levels by that point, which means we will have successfully “flattened the curve.”

And I just want to take a moment and say…  I’m proud of us for this.  I’m proud of Oregon.  I’ve always been proud to live in a pocket of the world where people step up and help each other when it’s needed.  I’ve been part of many, many fundraisers where there is a truly worthy cause, and people step up and give to that cause.  Hell, I’ve been a part of a lot of fundraisers where the cause is silly and weird, and yet still, people show up.  I’ve always loved that about this part of the world, and I’m proud to be a part of it, and to call myself a native.

We’re not perfect; we get a lot of things wrong.  And when we get things wrong, we tend to argue about it and get kinda set in our beliefs.  This problem is getting worse, and I’ll be the first to admit my own guilt in this.

But dammit…  we worked hard to get here.  We didn’t agree on everything, but for the most part, we kinda bent to our natural instincts that a little bit of sacrifice might actually help our community.  And we did it.  I saw sacrifice everywhere.  Hell, I lost my WHOLE career for a year and half, and I fully thought that was never coming back.  But I never blamed anybody or any organization.  It was a tough break, and it was a consequence of a global pandemic.  (I got lucky and crawled out of unemployment and got my job back).  That part was my sacrifice.  But so many families and so many companies sacrificed SO MUCH MORE.

I’m proud of Oregon.  I always have been, and now that there is kind of an actual light at the end of the tunnel…  I look forward to removing my mask and looking around at each other and smiling.

~Jake from 98.7 The Bull