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In the Good Witch movies, the mayor’s wife, Martha Tinsdale likes to have everything a certain way: hers. She claims that she’s trying to keep the “traditional values” of the community, but she has a way of steamrolling everyone else and enforcing her own ideas as the ‘right” ones. Right from the start she decides that Cassie is a witch, and that her store is full of “black magic”. She’s on a mission to run Cassie and her “evil” ways out of town.
Mrs. Tinsdale does everything she can to sway the community into believing that Cassie is evil and that her shop is a bad place full of dangerous things. She actually succeeds for quite a while. Cassie’s store even gets vandalized. Cassie nearly closes the shop, all because of Tinsdale’s closed-minded way of thinking and her absolute determination to make everyone think like her.
Things like this happen far too often in our society. Rather than educating themselves and trying to embrace new things, they fall on old (and usually wrong) beliefs and scream to the rafters about how horrible things are. They try to get everyone to rail against the thing or person, and those people don’t think or decide for themselves either.
Even if Mrs. Tinsdale didn’t like Cassie’s shop, the Bell, Book and Candle, she had no right to label it as evil and try to have it closed. She judged the shop and the owner with absolutely no facts. As the story goes on Tinsdale learns what a wonderful person Cassie is and how much good is in her shop and feels ashamed and humbled from her actions. She could have avoided it all if she’s just taken the time to open her mind and learn some facts before passing judgment on things and people she didn’t understand.
It’s wrong for anyone to label something or someone as evil, bad or negative if we don’t have all the facts. Even if you’ve been taught a certain way, you can always choose to learn for yourself and decide for yourself. Don’t let others think for you, and don’t hold on to old, limiting beliefs. Open your mind. Learn new things. Give people a chance. Being closed minded never leads to anything good.
