Why is it that all elected state and county officials are receiving their regular paychecks? Please tell me why you should sleep at night without worrying about feeding your family, your house payment or rent, your employees and their families, or about whether or not you’ll even have a business at all? You basically contribute nothing to the bottom line except cost.

Maybe waking up in the middle of the night with a pit in your stomach wondering and worrying how you’re going to make your car payment or your credit card payment or the lease payment on your shuttered business location . . . maybe when you need to visit your doctor because your blood pressure has elevated to a dangerous level, or you have thoughts that somehow you’ve let your family down . . . maybe then you’ll realize just how essential that neighborhood bakery is, or that gallery on Front Street is, or that restaurant owner who has his life savings tied up in order to feed the community, tourists and his family.

Maybe you’ll stop taking us for granted because you’ll feel the pain the rest of us feel. Maybe you won’t be so cavalier with your decisions to further delay opening if it also affects you. Maybe you’ll start listening to us essentials and realize that we don’t work for you, you work for us. Just maybe you’ll reach out to the essentials and ask them, “Can you afford to wait any longer?”

I know you can. And that’s where the problem lies.

John Kennedy

Lahaina