Solace

 The West is on fire; the pandemic rages world-wide; economies everywhere are in free-fall; our country’s President is a liar and buffoon ranting crazily online while the nation suffers; the stupid professional football season has actually started with fans in the stands; and to top it off, I boiled over the milk making my coffee and covered the stove in a mess.

 

Everything is fucked.

 

Almost.

 

You can still ride your bike to more than one lake in the city and dive in the water to paddle around, lie on your back, and practice water yoga of a sort; you can still drink beer outside on a late summer’s evening; you can still listen to stories about nothing in particular from people you’ve known for a while; and there remains the entertainment of seeing familiar faces make spectacles of themselves in familiar ways.

 

We’re all going to die, perhaps sooner than later, so may as well enjoy whatever enjoyments are available while they’re available, and if that includes congregating at a small street-end park and talking a little louder than the nearby residents probably prefer, well, then, so be it, since, after all, it’s still early and you won’t be there longer than a beer or two anyway.

 

Responsibility looms for me in the coming week, so I was glad to be relatively irresponsible for at least one more time before the hammer comes down.  And it was delightful to see a good measure of less responsibility in operation as well.

 

I’m tired of being oppressed by the future; perhaps one antidote to that is to embrace the present, warts and all, and try to make the best of a bad situation.

 

If life gives you lemons, make lemonade, as Beyoncé reminded us; if life gives you fire, may as well then make light; if life gives you pandemic, then there’s feeling better together; if life insists on being so crazy, may as well go crazier, too.