Decision

I have decided--after long consideration and much soul searching and consulting with learned oracles--that I can't care about everything. Or even most things. It appears my care well is nearly dry, and thus I must conserve the precious care for things I actually do care about: my family, my friends, my community, my state, my nation...

That list still feels large, but it allows me to not care about other people's stances on statues, their impassioned pleas about movies and TV shows, their desperate defense of...cartoons, God help us.

Mind you, I think I may get more of this since I have friends all over the political spectrum from the far right to the far left and plenty in the middle. Sometimes my Facebook Timeline and Twitter Feed feel quite schizophrenic as the memes go from deifying President Trump to condemning him to the fieriest hell; from Black Lives Matter to Blue Lives Matter to All Lives Matter to LGBTQ Lives Matter; from COVID bubble buddies to COVID conspiracy theorists.

This is my fault, I guess. People who are good to me are my friends whatever their beliefs are and as long as they allow me to have mine. It's easy to be my friend as long as you're good to me. I don't require anything else.

But y'all are making me tired. You are so mean to people who hold different beliefs than you do. It's dismaying and discouraging. What I want from you, what I really, really, really want (Spice Girls reference!) is for y'all to treat each other the way you treat me. That would be awesome. It might help to remember that those labels you toss around--Republican, Democrat, Christian, Jew, gay, straight, etc.--all have real people behind them. People who struggle with this broken world just the way you do.

Anyway, see what you can do, okay? And remember, one day we will rise to greet a new dawn...together.