The tiniest of splinters, a mere scratch on the back of my knuckle. At least it wasn’t the rust from the metal fireplace I was carrying a few hours ago. At least it wasn’t the bite of the spider I navigated around today. Small mercies, I suppose.

It was a beautiful moment, a conversation with a stranger. Two people who held no power over each other but acknowledged the differences in their lives. Similar thoughts and yet different opinions. A conversation, an actual conversation, with listening and talking and sharing of points of view. There was no yelling, no belligerent arguing about why one person’s view, one person’s choice, was the better of the two. It was delicious.

It was also sad. It was not a conversation that made a difference either way. They still believe in the failures and I still believe in the better options that lay ahead. 

It’s a lost conversation that bothers me, really. The one with a friend who used to be smart and compassionate, but now yells and repeats the fear fed to them from the political news. The people who no longer trust their intuition and ignore all the signs and flags on the path they are currently on. And then they lament how hard things are, how it’s all gone to crap. 

Well, honey, if you look around and realize, you’ll see what others have been trying to tell you for ages now. The deliberate choices you made, to follow the pain and perpetuate the ignorance, are the very things that have now burned your skin and soul. Trying to bring everyone down to lay in the muck with you is not the solution. So get up, brush off what you can, and figure out how to climb out of the mire and join the people who are building and singing and creating the better spaces.

He holds in his papery skinned hands, a book of fairy tales, old mythologies that hold nuggets of once-upon-a-time truths in them. His face mask is pulling on his ears, folding them forward so far I’m amazed the mask stays on, much less that his glasses do. He moves slow, his age shrinking and stiffening muscles in what I estimate is his 9^th decade on this planet. But his eyes light up as he shares the languages and short hand writing styles and alphabets and stories he has learned and crafted and shared over the years. I am both impressed and jealous. 

My default mode is to hurry, get through the line and get my errands run and get home. But why? What is waiting for me at home? More chores, more work, more zoning out and avoiding the harder parts of the things I need to do. Gutters. Gutters need to be cleaned. I’ve put that off for weeks. I will probably put it off for more. So I’m not going to suddenly be useful if I rush out of here to head home. 

So listen. Listen to him share a bit of his world. He may not have many who do anymore. I can be that for him today, here, now. For five, ten minutes, whatever he needs. He can share his research and thoughts with someone who can listen for a bit. 

I look at the splinter on the back of my hand. I sigh. The day has sapped my energy already. Driving in traffic, dodging cars on the road and navigating different places. Too much time dodging humans who refuse to wear masks inside the store, even though the signs all around say masks required. It’s exhausting to see people who just don’t care like that. Those are the people who make me want to give up. 

Now I don’t have the energy to cut the wood. Wait. That’s not all true. I want to cut the wood, I have the measurements ready, I’m ready to cut and create. I don’t have the energy to move the bikes out of the way so I can get to the table I need to pull out that I need to use to hold the chop saw, or I need to dig out the sawhorses and find the jigsaw and then find the working extension cord. But to get to the table or the sawhorses I need to move the bikes and the boxes full of books and the stacks full magazines from the 1950’s that need to be rehomed with a collector somehow and I just don’t have the drive to take pictures of them to post online to try to sell. It took two months to sell the metal fireplace that I was carrying earlier. 

Mental fatigue and physical fatigue and adhd and election fatigue and anxiety over what may or may not happen in three weeks leads to a lot of executive dysfunction and insomnia. Today, right now, I am done. I have done the things I needed to do, and have no more energy to get to the things I want to do. Today, I am done. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe tomorrow there will be mercy again.