Hello people of the Realms,
I wanted to wait a couple days before I sent out this message, I wanted you to understand that while this missive is certainly a reaction, its purpose is not to be reactionary.
It’s no secret that many members of our beloved community feel less safe today than they did last week. Some are worried about health care, about civil liberties, about their place in society, even about their continued right to be who they are. If there was something that could be said to make any of those fears evaporate I would say it in an instant.
Sadly I don’t have those words for you, but I’ll offer to you what words I do have.
Those of you who are old like me remember a well loved reporter and news anchor for CBS named Dan Rather. A voice who reported some of the most pivotal events of the previous generations including Kennedy’s assassination and Nixon’s Watergate scandal. Though he’s retired, he’s still active as a writer and on social media. Wednesday he posted this:
“I wanted to share my daughter Robin's post from this morning:
We can do hard things ( again.) Get up. Shake it off. Don’t panic or isolate. Take care of the young ones who got their hopes up. Encourage their dreams. Lean into your trusted political and social networks and plan how to connect with other adjacent groups quickly and make plans. Organize more deeply than you think we can. Resistance starts now. We know how to do it. We’ve done it before. Visualize our getting through this in the most beautiful and intact way. Please please please just do not give up. We can love and protect each other through this. We have to.”
As I took time to ponder Robin Rather’s words, I stumbled upon the realization that she was talking about Realms. Not directly, obviously, but so much of what Realms is can be found in what she’s asking of us.
There’s no doubt that Realms is, for many of us, our most important and enduring social network. When you look across the community, it’s easy to count the reasons that we are each different from one another but at the end of the day aren’t most of those differences superficial? The things that unite us, the things that we have in common with one another, are much more obvious and powerful if we take a step back and look for them.
In this community, in the Realms, you have a place full of like-minded individuals who care about one another like family, who have mentored each other and helped one another navigate their place in the world, who have learned and grown beside one another as we’ve become better versions of ourselves.
I’ll paraphrase something Queen Meg herself once imparted to me. In this community we have a place where we have quested together to save the world, even if it wasn’t the real world we were saving. We have a place where we have stood beside each other to fight off evil, even if that evil was only make-believe. We have a place where we have bled together in combat even if no real blood was ever spilled to the ground.
These experiences were real, even if they were about pretend things. The feeling of wanting to save the world, the resolution to stand against monsters, the willingness to shed blood on behalf of the ones you love. Those things are yours. You earned them. You are strong. Stronger, perhaps, than you even know.
Finally I want to say something about resistance.
Resistance means probably a hundred different things and will take a hundred different forms and I can’t pretend I fully understand even a fraction of all of them.
But I do know this. One type of resistance, a very powerful one, is joy.
I know that seems counterintuitive to some, and it might seem flippant to talk about joy when so many people are afraid, but I’ll try to convince you that it’s not. Joy is self-care. Joy is a panacea to burn-out. Joy is recharging our batteries to allow us to brace for harder things. Joy is fellowship and the ability to make use of the fact that humans need connections to one another to thrive. Joy is a type of support that can shelter us if we let it and can inspire us if we leverage it to do so.
Experiencing victory together. Giving those who are scared a place to put fear aside for a moment. Comforting others with a sense of family and community. Celebrating each other’s achievements. Doing little things to make one another happy. All of these things and countless others just like them. Those are the immutable joys that belong to us here in the Realms.
I say these things because I want to implore this:
Continue all the amazing things that you do to keep Realms a place full of joy and do not foist guilt upon yourself for seeking that joy in a time when the world feels far from perfect.
I believe in you and I believe in us.
In service,
Jason Rosa, on behalf of the Knights of the Realms
Undersigned,
Matthew Brenner
Keith Cronyn
Kathy Fey
Randy Gordon
Angie Gray
Jason Gray
Ben Greene
Lani Jones
Steven Matulewicz
James Murphy
Tucker Noyes
Janna Oakfellow-Pushee
Sean Veale