The binary and grey of today is astounding. “I said what I said, I am right and you are wrong. Also, I love you and won’t desert you like you deserted me. And yet you are wrong, right? Are you?”

Repeat.

I wonder how often each of us play this refrain in our minds. Some may say this out loud. As I sit on my patio, feeling the warm, lovely September sun on my face, smiling at it’s grandeur while attempting to see my computer screen through the glare, loving the escapism that unfiltered sunshine gives yet thumping away at a keyboard that facilitates the power of words. I think of the conversations in my head, so many, with myself and with others. This time in history is real and raw and wretched. But I said what I said. And I meant it. And I still love you.

This time in history is like a strange, scalene triangle, with white and black and grey switching places so you never know when you will land in the feels of grey, or in the drama of white and black, corners. This extends not only to relationships, but also to all of life as we know it right now.

For those who think I’m a full-on social justice machine, no. I’ve been binge-watching Glee. Sometimes after a day of working on your racist self and voter turnout efforts, you just need a little Jesse St. James. I’ve taken a break from reading hard material for just a spell; Jane Austen novels lull me to sleep each night. The beauty is I know the plot, and I know who wins in the end, and I know who is stupid and wrong, and there are no surprises. You don’t get a hairpin turn in last chapter of Sense and Sensibility and learn Mr. Edward Ferrars is really in love with Mom Dashwood and Elinor has to be the bridesmaid at that horror of that wedding. Jane Austen, with all of its social commentary, is the anti-2020 for me.

For those who think swimming everyday at noon (the beauty of the outdoor September chlorine bath cannot be overstated) and filling my mind with both nerd pablum like Captain Wentworth, Lizzy Bennet and George Knightly but also the vapidity of a Glee Marathon is not befitting of 2020, sorry, I need it. And so do you. Or your version of it.

Even my work is not immune to chaos of today. As I build a client base for my small law practice, I vaccilate between “you must take every client” to living in the bliss of “no, you don’t, it’s 2020, you’ve found your voice and you can damn well do what you want.” The beauty of now, at age 53, is I can. say. no. to. a. client. I. don’t. want. At first it feels bad, like rejecting someone who asks you to dance or join your virtual small group, and then it feels amazing, almost like that noon swim, you leaving the prospective but ill-fitting client on the pool deck of your life as you stroke down that thin black line.

So, as we all bounce amid this scalene triangle, never knowing which corner we are lodged in, only to be upended, without knowing when we’ll arrive at the next corner or how far away it is, remember this.

Take today to remember this.

You are important enough that we need your work on (fill in your blank, e.g., voter turnout, education equity, feral cat rescue).

You are deserving enough to take in your own daily dose of Glee-binging.

You are loved enough to be able to say, “I said what I said,” even when people dislike you for it or even desert you for it.

You are human enough to mourn being friendship- or family-dumped.

You are loved enough to disagree with me about everything. And I am loved enough to get to decide how I engage with that.

I said what I said.

It’s time for a swim.