The Holidays are slipping away from me. I’m buzzing, speeding, moving faster than sound waves. Brain on overdrive, pedal to the metal. It’s Hanukkah. It’s Christmas. It’s Kwanza. It’s New Year’s. All at once.
I see my entire life in rewind. My whole life crammed into two weeks. I remember my childhood and the Hanukkah candles, my single years with the Hanukkah candles and the Christmas tree because I thought it was pretty and festive and fun, Christmas in New York with a potted plant. Then married years of collecting ornaments and my daughter throwing icicles around the room.
Years ago, we gave up the tree lot Christmas tree because of allergies, then we gave up the living Christmas tree because of the same allergies, then we gave up the fake tree (which I really loved – the whole thing was one big decoration), and this year I forgot to buy Hanukkah candles.
The parties are like networking meetings. Everyone has business cards. Even family get-togethers feel like replays, like obligations, like the children are all leaving home and this is the only way we can see them.
Some of us are giddy. Some of us are blue. Some of us are lifted up by whose birthday and whose steadfastness we’re celebrating. Some of us are tired. I’m just, well, feeling.
It’s hard to be or feel any one thing in the middle of all this celebrating, cooking, cleaning, putting off work, missing appointments, going out of town, caring for and being visitors and houseguests. It’s hard to be any one thing or feel any one thing ever.
To me, this whirlwind of tradition, ritual, repetition, counting of years, remembering where we were at that Christmas, that Hanukkah, that Kwanza is a swirl of emotion that ties me to my past, propels me into my future, and makes me stand right here, right now, awestruck, watching the air fly past my eyes.
And it makes me love myself and all people just a little more – because I can’t cling to the past or dream about the future or pretend to not be here. It’s like a vortex. It’s past, present and future – the same for everyone.
We’re all connected here – not by religion or tradition or even the start of yet another year, but by the fact that we’re all tied to this season of both celebrating and lamenting everything all these things bring to the surface for us to feel. All at once.
In any given moment, there are infinite possibilities of feeling. Turn to your desk. All those things sitting on it. Look at them. Touch one at a time. Doesn’t each have a different feel, a different memory?
I look at the picture of my dog, Popcorn, who passed away four years ago, and still feel a wave of sadness and regret for what I didn’t do for her, and then my new dog, Hazel, three years old, touches my shoe with her face, and a wave of delight goes through me.
The rubber band on the desk reminds me of something old, and it feels like something fun, and the air smells like flowers, and it’s cold in here. All at once.
Feelings morph. They’re liquid. They can go from unbearably bereft grief to stunningly tingly pleasure in less than the blink of an eye. We don’t have to stay in our dungeons of loneliness or our prisons of pain, or our clouds of infatuation.
We can move through it all, cycle through it, round in a circle or up and down or side to side, and swim in the Soup of our own emotions, our own soul’s treasure chest.
If you’re feeling blue, it’s not who you are. It’s just the way you feel right now. It’s okay to look at the cat with love in the middle of feeling grief. It’s okay to cry and then laugh, to look at a page from the news in disbelief and dread, and then laugh over the movie section.
This is what we do best, us humans. We feel.
What it is about the Holidays, for me, is that it’s a season of contradiction, confusion, old and new, real and fake, love and emptiness. It’s happy. We’re up. We’re celebrating. It’s sad, we’re down, we’re blue. It lights up the choice we get to make at every moment.
If we have “Happy Holidays” and “The Holiday Blues,” if we give to those less fortunate and feel unfortunate, if we give and try to remember how to receive, if I am exhilarated and at the same time terrified, which do I choose to believe? What do I focus on?
People who are heroic seem to absolutely get, and try to teach us, that there is joy in life, and that, even in the most desperate of moments, it’s good to focus on the joy even while you’re experiencing the pain.
So, while you focus on joy, remember what you remember and see what you see and feel what you feel about pain. While you focus on peace, remember and see and feel what you experience as chaos. While you focus on love, don’t avoid anything you feel, even if it’s fear.
Travel across the landscape of your life focusing on what feels good - peace and love and joy - and know that, even though pain and chaos and fear are always along for the ride, you can ride with them without getting stuck in them.
It’s the Holidays. Touch things, touch people, be human, receive love, and give love to yourself.
Every moment is a new memory. Whatever yours are, they’re yours to focus on, to remember or forget, to live for or with or through, to keep or toss, to stay mired in or use to jump into something wonderful.
Whatever you choose at any given moment, I wish you love, happiness and a whole lot of fun.
Love, Rori
