Many things happened Friday.

Specifically last Friday June 26^th, 2015.

For starters, a girl named Hollie thanked me for teaching her that morning at swim camp.

She thanked me several times actually. Hollie is maybe the most courteous young person I have ever coached. I don’t mean the kind of rote and robotic courtesy you encounter from someone who is afeared of what would happen if she weren’t courteous. Hers was a genuine, happy, eye contact with a nod and a smile kind of courtesy that makes each of our coaches and camp counselors glad we do what we do.

That was one thing that happened.

Free beer.

That’ll get your attention—or it gets mine, at least.

I enjoyed my free beer at Bishops Barbershop in Multnomah Village as I waited for my haircut after camp checkout. Consider it some me time after a lot of standing and walking on a pool deck for six days. My lager went down smooth while I read a Portland Mercury article about the new vinyl record pressing company in town, Oregon’s first. I don’t play music or have an album, but it’s nice to know that if I did I could get it pressed locally for the first time. As long as I could afford the minimum run of 500.

My long-overdue haircut, my beer, and a newspaper are small things. Yet, it is sometimes the little things that count.

As it happens, it is also sometimes the big things that count.

Dozens of people I know and care about deeply can now marry. Hundreds of thousands more that I don’t know can, too. And my gay friends who are already married will see those bonds and rights recognized nationwide.

Not a small thing.

In other news, swim camper Mark’s pinkeye was improved Friday morning. His eye drops were working and he was on his way home in relatively good spirits. No small victory for Mark, but it’s all relative.

Friday was also the day I broke my self-imposed Facebook (semi-)fast. It’s not worth explaining how a semi-fast works, trust me.

I thrilled in scrolling through my news feed to see friends’ and family’s reactions to the Supreme Court ruling. Good will and celebration rang far and wide. I pictured the heart-swell of joy spreading across the land like veins carrying lifeblood through our bodies.

A big thing.

Others are not celebrating.

I know this. I regret it. But, what I see and hear and feel from friends is not the in-your-facing taunt of a shallow victory, but true joy ringing out. I mean the hammer of justice, bell of freedom, song of love kind of joy. It’s that big.

Not everybody I know is on board.

Cruising that same news feed reminds me of this. I care about and respect people with widely differing views from my own. What I’m glad about is the fact that the messages I saw from them showed (reiterated) that these friends are decent people. The backlash of hate and small mindedness that I know is coursing through the same internet is not coming from these friends.

That, too, is not a small thing. I am glad I have been able to surround myself not just with people like me, but with people who are good and decent though they may still believe different things. I am grateful for this, even as I wish some of them felt different.

It can be hard not to reduce things to us and them when dealing with something society considers a wedge issue. This one feels more like a schism issue, a colossal canyon separating opinions.

I am glad about the Supreme Court’s ruling. I am glad for the groundswell of acceptance that led to this day, decades in the making. It’s not lost on me that we are only slowly, incrementally, catching up to much of the first world on this and so many other issues.

The diversity and uniqueness that makes our country great has also sown the seeds for a complicated path to say the least.

Let’s be honest, I live in a progressive corner of a progressive state on the west coast. Elsewhere people are fighting back, lobbing incendiary calls for boycotts, and cheering as local governments strike back against the new law of our land.

I hope the groundswell of acceptance and change that got us this far washes over those regions and continues to clean away fear and misguided beliefs.

One thing strikes me as I think about those places where the response to this ruling is not merely tepid compared to mine, but downright frosty. I am glad for the rays of hope the ruling might give to the LGBT community living within those strongholds of bias. To live either closeted in fear or out in fear, surrounded by bias and bigotry, is no small trial. Their hope remains a light at the end of a long, winding tunnel, but one whose end approaches without ceasing.

There are bias and inequality in all places. The road ahead is long, not short, but a better future lies ahead and we are moving toward it.

This is not an end, but only a point for celebration along the journey. So I return for another moment to my scrolling newsfeed of friends and their rainbow-tinted celebrations of joy—inner happiness radiating out across the world.