Our Desk | Wear your mask, mind your own business

Julie Zhu

I support you and respect you when you wear a mask because you personally thought it through and decided that it was prudent to do so for various reasons, including protecting others. I appreciate it and I also encourage you, and I will keep liking you while you continue wearing a mask until you find it acceptable to not have to wear it anymore.
However, whenever you wear your mask, do mind your own business for the sake of the freedom of everybody who does not share an identical position to you.
I, for one, do not share this sentiment. But I do think that your thoughts are none of my business, because we are all different people and everybody is different.
I wear a mask whenever I enter any premises that require me to wear a mask. For instance, on the bus, in a taxi, in government buildings, sometimes at the supermarket, sometimes in a shopping center, even at a friend’s house at their request.
Even though I disagree with all these must-wear-a-mask-here policies, and even though I have thought that from the beginning until today that masks only protect us from our fears, I still comply with all the abovementioned rules.
Wearing a mask in indoor spaces is a general rule that the majority have implemented or somehow forced the government to implement. I never agreed with it in the first place, not now or ever. But I go along with it as it is, in my opinion, a reflection of how society has been functioning since life has existed: the majority win in the short term.
Not only I am ok with the rule about wearing masks indoors, I support it, and I don’t resent it for even a little bit because of what I have just explained.
However, I only hold this obligation when I am at these premises. Once I set foot on the streets, freedom is my natural right, including the freedom not to wear a mask.
When I am feeling ill or diagnosed with some kind of transmissible sickness, I wear a mask wherever I go, I try to keep my distance from people, and I try to avoid going to work.
Again, nobody has any right to tell other people what to do or not to do unless … or maybe there is no unless.
If you are really unhappy with other people not wearing a mask on the street, you can try to force the Macau government to pass an order to require all pedestrians to wear a mask. Then I and other people will conform to it. If you cannot, I again recommend that you “wear your masks, and mind your own business.”
You can define who you are, who you want to be, however you want to live your life, how you want to name and identify yourself, but that’s it. Your definitions end with you. You have no right to define others, to say who they are or who they are not, to decide what they can do or what they cannot do.
Wear your mask, mind your own business.