We enter the holidays, that slice at the end of the calendar when the days feel absurdly brief, wildly over-scheduled and critically important all at once. Keeping my focus off the cartoon-nightmare level of chaos going on in the country has me looking at cookbooks, candles and kind lists of advice on how we can get through.
Being human, I happily take advice without much thought as to being able or willing to follow it. Free advice is often worth just what you pay for it, but sometimes it turns out to be genuine treasure.
The first best advice is to stay in touch. Reach out to friends, connect with colleagues, talk with family. This is always a challenge for me, as my instinct is to retreat. A 700 page novel, or a five hour movie, feel much easier than interacting with people. Me; currently struggling.
The second best is to cherish the beauty. Surroud yourself wit Nature, art, music; delightful fragrances and delicious flavors, the sound of happy laughter. I indulge the extravagance of having a Christmas tree in my living room every year, and the lights and the ornaments can give me the feeling that life is good, that joy exists, that happiness can happen.
Currently struggling – I am filled with doubt.
Waking up this morning to a fog so dense I can’t see the other side of the creek, it’s feeling very metaphorical.
I remember hiking up to the top of a mountain last year, the sun shining, only to have a cloud come in ( a very cold, wet cloud) and envelope the whole group of us in what seemed like a moment removed from time. When the cloud moved on, and we could once again see to the floor of the valley, miles below us, it left me with a very tangible sense of how time feels different in the dark.
My family all tease each other gently about our seasonal challenges; “How can it be 5:30 when it feels like midnight?”
The third best bit of advice is to be as patient and kind as you can. With yourself, with everyone around you. Almost everyone is somewhere on a spectrum between pressured and traumatized, and the simplest communications can be sticky.
The page will turn, the calendar will shift, and somehow we will get through this. There is another season already on the way.
Judith Martin-Straw
