PASSPORT TO LIFE

Image copyright: rebel bran - Branislav Vrbaski 2021

Yesterday I got my passport to life.

My deep aversion to these slangs like “vax.xed”, “unvax.xed”, “jab.bed”, “double jab.bed”, and even deeper division of people they promote just grew ever stronger inside me.

What is happening to us, I asked myself while taking that photo of the red tree. At that moment, it reflected exactly how I feel inside. Boiling, outrage, confusion, disappointment, deep disappointment, doubt, helplessness, disarmament.

I told my friend I got permission now to go to pubs again.

What progress!

We got to the point where we need a pass to life.

Congratulations.

Image copyright: rebel bran - Branislav Vrbaski 2021

My path to this started with a deep aversion to vac(c)ination, which in turn started back in 2018. Since I moved to Canada in 1994, I have been getting the flu vaccine every year. And every year I would get the flu. Every year it would last longer. My right lung was getting worn out, literally.

In 2018, after I returned from my trip to Toronto in November, I got what I thought was a very bad cough. One that I never experienced before. My lungs and my head felt like exploding. At times I would cough so much that I felt I would pass out. Several times I would black out on my pillow, luckily returning to my senses with a frightening feeling of death lurring.

Image copyright: rebel bran - Branislav Vrbaski 2021

The cough was tearing my lungs appart, burning, and I would struggle to get enough air. I was sick at home for two weeks, and after that time it felt like it was finally getting bearable. Still coughing, I returned to work for a week, just to have the cough return even worse. So it started my back and forth between staying home sick and coming back to work for shorter periods.

My coworkers were wary of me being around and coughing my lungs out. At one point between January and February, coincidental or not, one third of my office was sick at home at the same time! I remember our clients were in disbelief hearing this, while I had a wrenching feeling in my guts that I may have been the cause.

Image copyright: rebel bran - Branislav Vrbaski 2021

That year, 2018, was the last I had the flu vaccine. The cough lasted well into the spring, and finally disappeared in June 2019, over six month after! In 2019 I again skipped the vac(c)ine, and that winter again, I was spared my usual coughs.

Then the p(l)andemic started.

My office immediately switched to remote working. In 2020 I skipped the flu vaccine again, and again my coughs never returned.

I was determined never to get the vac(c)ine again.

Image copyright: rebel bran - Branislav Vrbaski 2021

When the pressure started mounting to get vac(c)inated against c(l)ovid, my resistance started getting stronger. There are too many unclear things, concepts, rules and suspicious information going on that if you don’t realize it yourself, nobody could explain it to you. Many things you can only feel deep down in your guts.

Constant flip-flopping on recommendations and rules is just one of them. The confusion about the available data and refusal to share some key ones with the public is another one. Unclear information about all the deaths “related” to c(l)ovid is another.

Nobody ever mentions putting the billions of borrowed money into improving the healthcare system, weakening it even further by firing over 4000 healthcare workers for refusing to take the va(cc)ine is mind boggling!

Remember, those are the same ones we were making noise for every night at 7pm to thank them for their sacrifice?

Not to mention the idea that you walk with the mask to your table, only to remove it when you sit at it, and start eating, while the breath and spit particles start flying all over the place! The particles only stay around your table, you know. That's what experts must be thinking when making up that rule.

That one still tops it all.

Image copyright: rebel bran - Branislav Vrbaski 2021

So I was determined to avoid getting va(kk)ed for as long as I can, and hopefully skip it all together. It’s not the division and bullying by the writeous va(kk)ed people that got me to change my mind, nor is it being mandated. I was prepared not to live fully without it for as long as it takes. No pubs, no concerts, no travel, so be it!

Then my client calls and wants to meet my team at a pub for a design charrette!

And that was it.

It never even crossed my mind that it could happen because of a client. But it did. I was not going to go into arguments about c(l)ovid with them. No way. And I’m not going to tell them I can’t meet their expectations because of a jab either.

Image copyright: rebel bran - Branislav Vrbaski 2021

There was no way out.

I felt I had to capitulate. I felt deflated, helpless, trapped.

But I had to do it.

I’m still deeply against what’s happening in that respect. And I am convinced many things just don’t add up.

But at the end of the day, when everything gets back to normal, I want to look at myself and not feel I was a part of the problem. I did everything that could be done.

Is it going to return to normal? That's the real question. My gut tells me it never will.

But I still remain hopeful.

Even with this much frustration, at times anger about the government decisions, with lack of common sense, with censorships, with suppression of thoughts, with divisions, with distrust, I am still waiting.

And if it doesn’t come, we are in big trouble.

Until then, I still choose to believe in good.