Every decision you make has consequences. Every decision. Some consequences are “good” and some consequences are “bad”.
Let me tell you a little story. Warning – it is an awful story and it involves a horrendous death. If you don’t want to read it, skip past the picture of my cat and start reading again where you see the picture of my dog.
In 1991 I bought a full size Chevy Blazer – basically a street legal monster truck that could pass anything on the road except a gas station.
Gas was cheap and living was good and nobody cared about climate change. In those day we called it global warming and thought it was a great idea. Especially when we were going up into the central interior of BC where the winter temps dropped to 30 or 40 below zero.
Anyway, late one night I was driving through North Van along the Upper Levels Highway headed to the Iron Workers Memorial Bridge.
I was traveling at highway speed (or more) when I saw a raccoon in the middle of the highway.
As you probably hopefully know, it is incredibly dangerous to swerve when traveling along at highway speed – even if you see an animal directly in front of you – if you swerve, you risk losing control, or worse, you risk rolling your vehicle.
I couldn’t stomach the thought of running over the raccoon so I swerved just enough to make it around the raccoon. Even better, I did not lose control of the truck.
I missed the raccoon and ran over the three little baby raccoons that were following along behind the mother raccoon.
I made a decision to not run over a raccoon and as a result of my decision I killed her three babies. There were consequences for my decision. Consequences that I continue to live with.
If you are just rejoining the thread here, the message is, there are consequences for every decision you – or we make. That is the same for your decision to support or not support a local restaurant.
The online conversation – what isn’t online these days? – the online conversation is about whether you should or should not order food from local restaurants during this pandemic.
The conversation is about the consequences of your decisions.
If you choose to support your local restaurant and get take-out food or drinks, you are supporting and helping your local place survive the current shutdown. That’s s a good consequence.
However, you are also requiring other people to go outside and travel, often by public transit. People are putting their health at risk in order for you to stay home and safely support your local eatery. And to eat food you did not have to prepare. More consequences.
People are putting their lives health at risk so that you can eat restaurant food. While you are supporting your local restaurant continue to survive. Consequences.
And then there is the issue of how do you get the food you want – do you order through food delivery apps or do you call the local place and order directly from the restaurant and then go out yourself and pick it up. Yes, there are more consequences to your choices.
If you order food through a delivery app such as Uber Eats or Skip the Dishes, the corporation that owns the app is probably making as much money from your food order as the restaurant is making.
Also, you are again asking someone else to put their health at risk by going out, picking up your food order, and delivering it to your door.
At the same time, the people doing the pick up and drop-off of your food are getting paid to do the delivery. So you are helping people be employed. But the delivery people are putting themselves at risk. Consequences.
No matter what you do, there will be consequences. All I can say is do the best you can. Like the adage we used to use in the old days, pre-COVID-19, “Think globally and act locally.”
And remember that there will be consequences. Some good. Some not so good. Just consequences.