Everyone who’s throwing a fit right now, or perhaps even worse, tuning out because they don’t like any of the options in American politics, please stop and take a breath. It’s hard to believe, I know, but the country is a big place. That all your friends, or your parents and their scary conservative friends, or the people you see shouting on Facebook think a certain way, doesn’t mean that those feelings are universal. Somehow we have to take a million disparate and often contradictory opinions and churn them into a coherent policy.

At the end of the day, for a presidential race, one person is going to get the job. Just one. The chance that the person who gets the job is going to line up perfectly with your preferences is nil. I’ll even go out on a limb and say that the chance that the positions the winner actually pursues match up perfectly with their own preferences is nil. Some of this is about compromise. Some of this is about political reality. But a lot of it is just a numbers game. How likely do you think it is, really, that out of everyone in the country you and your friends hold the perfect set of opinions everyone else can rally around?

So if you can’t quite get excited because this one is horrifying and that one said something you didn’t like, get over yourself. You’re not here to elect a clone. You’re not here for a cult of personality who can sweep you off your feet and make you fall in the kind of love that blinds you to the fact that your crush is actually kind of a dick with a bunch of nasty habits. You’re here to pick a steward for the country. You’re here to have a say in what direction policy moves, not to dictate that policy or chose the perfect one.

Voting for the person who pissed you off with her pandering won’t-anyone-think-of-the-children stance on violent media and who you think has too many ties to a wealthy establishment you rightly distrust isn’t a tragedy or a betrayal. It just isn’t what you’d want in an ideal world. Because that’s not the vote. You aren’t choosing between your ideal proxy and this imperfect representative. You’re choosing between a complex human with admirable and despicable traits and someone who disagrees with nearly everything you stand for. Staying home because you’re insufficiently inspired is literally saying that you don’t care if we end up with someone who thinks we should kill innocent family members of people we think might be terrorists because you don’t like the other option’s tone enough. It’s saying that you don’t care if we end up eliminating all taxes on the wealthiest Americans and eliminating virtually all regulations on Wall Street, because you suspect the other option also has some ties to big money and might not spit quite as much fire against the 1% as you’d prefer. It’s saying you don’t care if Roe v. Wade is overturned or if trans people are made into human punching bags because the other choice didn’t come around on gay marriage quite as quickly as you would have liked. It’s saying that you don’t care if we stick our fingers in our ears and yell “Global warming isn’t happening, burn burn, drill drill” because you think the other choice might be a little slimy.

And if you don’t think that any of these issues are real concerns or enough to make you scared and excited to cast your vote, I don’t know what to tell you. If you think that this isn’t how politics should work, that’s fair enough. If you long for the dreamy-eyed candidate who can sweep you off your feet while silkily convincing everyone who disagrees with you how wrong they are and uniting the country into one big happy love fest where everyone prospers for a century to come, that’s a great dream. Work for all those things. Give money to advocacy groups you agree with. Vote in the primaries. Vote in your local elections. Encourage people to run who have no hope of winning but will bring voice to issues you care about and ensure the main stream candidates can’t take you for granted. These all help one step at a time. But do not take your ball and go home. Don’t let yourself think that striving for that perfection is more important than a livable end result. Do not let perfect be the enemy of good. Do not think that disillusionment with your inability to find that one perfect politician means there is nothing worth fighting for and voting doesn’t matter.

Cast your vote for the direction you want the country to move in, even if it isn’t the end point you want. Even if it is one step back, two steps forward. That’s how our democracy works. The people who disagree with you sure as hell aren’t going to stay home. So I’m sorry you’re not as excited as you’d like to be. I’m sorry you’re disgruntled about the options you have. And yes, your complaints are valid. But we’re not here to be excited. We’re here to elect the people who are going to make real, tough, boring, complicated, and imperfect choices. That isn’t exciting. That’s vital. That’s breathing air. That’s drinking water. It’s work. It’s your job. Do it.