If You Have To Wonder, You Might Already Know The Answer

[Listen to an audio version of this blog here.]

“If you have to wonder,” she said, “you might already know the answer.” She wasn’t talking to me, but maybe she was. I was sitting in the back of my SUV on a makeshift mattress I use for car camping and mountain running and napping by the beach. I was facing the ocean, tap tap tapping away at my computer. Trying to write something good. Trying to figure out my emotions. Trying to make something that made sense. Two women were sitting in yellow lawn chairs in front of me drinking lemonade and talking. Their voices were loud and unabashed. There was drama with an ex-husband and his new wife; there were gushes and complaints about the men each of them was dating; the problems they were having; the heartache and audacity and chemical rushes that go hand-in-hand with falling in and out of love.

“If you have to wonder, you might already know the answer.”

As I listened to the women chat, I watched people walk by on the sidewalk that overlooked the ocean. An elderly couple with an matching elderly French bulldog. Two grown men in long basketball shorts. A mother and her grown daughter. A woman wearing Chacos walking a large brown lab. A young couple holding hands. Another elderly couple; the man with a walker, the woman…