Everybody’s got a plan for the day it happens.
Parties. Fireworks. Champagne. Some guy in Ohio is going to shoot a cannon at a cornfield. People are going to hug strangers in parking lots, which is how you catch things. Grown adults will cry on the local news next to a reporter holding a microphone like it’s a bouquet.
Not me. I’ve got a better plan.
I’m going to be bored.
Gloriously, magnificently, stupidly bored. Before the sun’s up, I’m grabbing my paddleboard and pushing off into the harbor while the water’s still flat. No phone. No headlines. Just me and a pelican who looks at me like I owe him money. I’m going to sit out past the boats and watch the sun come up. That sun has been rising for millions of years, and it never once needed a press conference.
I’m going to delete every news app on my phone. All of them. The ones that buzz at two in the morning to tell me something insane happened, as if insane were breaking news anymore. For years my phone has been a smoke alarm with a camera. That’s over. It goes back to being a flashlight and a way to order pizza.
I’m going to read a book with no politics in it. A book about dogs. Dogs don’t hold rallies. Dogs don’t post at three in the morning. A dog shows up, eats a bowl of food, sometimes poops on your floor and leaves. That’s an honest relationship.
I’m going to eat dinner without arguing at the table. I’m going to fall asleep without doom-scrolling in the dark like a raccoon going through a dumpster. I’m going to wake up and realize I don’t know what anybody in Washington said yesterday, and I don’t care, and that’s the healthiest I’ll have felt in a decade.
Boredom is the most underrated freedom in America.
I want my country boring again. Predictable. A place where the evening news puts you to sleep before the weather. A place where the biggest scandal of the week is a senator who wore brown shoes with a blue suit.
Peace and quiet are a luxury you only notice after somebody steals them.
So go ahead. Pop the cork. Light the fireworks.
I’ll be out on the water.
Doing absolutely nothing.
Smiling.
How about you?
~Mitch 🌴
Touché!
Beautiful. and the sooner the better.