I missed last week’s blog. I’m in catch-up mode. Not because I feel I should, but because I want to. I want to say what’s on my mind.
The reason I didn’t write in time for last Sunday was that I bogged myself down in my own thoughts.
When I first typed that sentence, the last word came out as “troughs”. Ok. I got bogged down in the troughs of my own (and to be fair, other people’s) negativity. The uplift winch, usually reliable, was struggling under the weight of absences and ice and boiler breakdowns and uncertainty and the sheer load of what other people think this time of year should be like for me.
I got very sad about the approach of Christmas. This is my 5th year of spending Christmas alone. And the biggest problem with that, it has taken me these five years to work out, is that most other people are not ok with it. Most people flinch, and immediately wish they hadn’t asked what I’m doing. I can see that. I can feel it. They are sad on my behalf and that makes me think I’m supposed to be sad, and so I conform.
Stop. I don’t need to be sad, just because you or they or whoever have bought into this message that (I quote) No-one should be alone at Christmas. Don’t take this personally. Or do. That’s a choice for you to make. But I’m not trying to upset anyone. I’m just putting out a plea on behalf of all of those who do not, or cannot, or choose not to see certain days on the calendar the way the western world and its media circus say that we should.
Here's a thing: no-one should be alone, ever, except when they choose to be.
My first solo yuletide, I did choose to do alone, mainly because it already felt like something I would have to get used to – a fact that was underlined when the people I thought might invite me not to be, didn’t. To be fair, I did also want that quiet time at the turning of the year to process my own thoughts and feelings.
The intervening years have been what they have been, and don’t need to be talked about. What I have learned is this: I would not choose to spend this time of year alone, but that’s because I would choose to spend it with certain specific people, which for various reasons is not possible. There is the subtle distinction that gets missed. It isn’t about ‘being alone’, it is about not being with the one or the few or the many that we would choose to be with. It isn’t a distinction between “alone” and “not alone”. It is a distinction between “alone” and “being with [whoever]”. If the whoever is not an option, then alone is often preferable to all the other possibilities.
One of the best responses I got this year was a new friend who said, “So are you ok with that, or is it just the way it is?” Kind of both, if I’m honest. I am ok with it, but only because it is the way it is.
The second biggest problem is that I haven’t yet managed to just put my hand up and say: look I know it looks like I’m “doing Christmas” but I’m not. I’m celebrating the Winter Solstice, the turning of the year, the move back towards the light, noticing the earth factuality of this time, and using that to tune into our metaphorical and actual relationship with our planet home. I have a Christmas tree – symbolic, because it’s plastic, but it is 25 years old, and will continue – and I decorate it with baubles that I have bought alongside those that have come down to me through two families.
I put up tinsel and fairy lights, because I like sparkly pretty things. No symbolism. They just make me smile, and that’s a good thing. I light candles in remembrance, and reverence and what passes for prayer…but mostly, again, I light them because they make me smile, and that is a good thing.
I think this is me, very publicly, putting my hand up and saying: this may be Christmas for you, for me it is the Solstice, the turning of the year, and yet – blessings for hope, and peace, and all good things – it’s all the same, really.
Just don’t ask me what I’m doing for Christmas, because I’m not.
And it’s the first year that I am underlining that for myself. I’m writing this on the 23rdDecember, and the next two days are simply the next two days. No specific meaning for me. Not because I'm opting out, but because I've just had a three-day celebration that has lifted my spirits much more than I was expecting. I am already into my new year.
So, let me now back-track a few days to last weekend, when I should have been writing this post.
I started to write a traditional ‘review of the year’ thing, and bored myself into submission. I’m not saying that my year has been boring. It has been a sequence of things happening and things not happening and nothing happening. It has been ups and downs. It has been straight-lines and side-swerves and diversions. Things have been broken and things have been mended. Things have been sold. Things have been given away. Things have been simply discarded. There have been lessons learned, and the recognition that some lessons are, as yet, beyond me.
There has been bliss. There has been depression. There have been relationship struggles and maybe endings. There are new friendships developing, and some older ones are being reinforced. There has been a lot of kindness. There has been a lot of inspiration. There has been a lot of laughter.
There has been a lot of writing and a lot of sharing.
I hope there has been a little progress.
So, when I say I was bored in the writing of the review, what I think I mean is that I am bored with the idea (for me personally) of constantly looking back. I want to be here now. And I want to look forward.
That sense has been underlined of late, by the recognition of how often people make themselves unnecessarily angry by revisiting past hurt, past wrongs. I am no clinical psychologist, and there are times when I know professional help is what is needed, but for most of us dealing with everyday difficulty, often the best thing we can do for ourselves is to ask why we are still carrying it around. I think we can (often, not always) help ourselves most by simply deciding to put the burden down. To label it ‘not my problem now’ and let rest in the past.
Following that thought process, I came to the conclusion that it is not only the bad and sad stuff that needs to be set down. The good stuff too. If it is done; let it be done. Remember it fondly, but do not carry it around as a measure against which new things are scaled or weighed. Do not carry it around as an obligation that traditions must be up-held.
One of my late-year decisions has been to abandon all old traditions. The people with whom these were shared are no longer around. Where is the sense in them if only I observe? Their purpose, I realise, has been outlived. If I need them to hold people or moments in memory, then perhaps those memories are not worth the keeping. The ones that are do not rest on certain things being done a certain way or at a certain time. I chose this year to be the last year that I did some things and/or the first year in which I did not.
The first beauty of doing this is that it creates tiny bits of simple time. Calendar dates become less important. Things can be done, or not done, or done differently as the whim strikes me.
The second beauty is that having cleared heart-space of such obligations (and any tradition or ritual that has become too embedded is nothing more nor less than a “should” or a “must”) other offerings start to flutter down. I hear more people talking about the way they do things, and why.
Occasionally one such idea will settle. Oh, I like that! is the immediate response, which then leads onto the pondering of would it work for me? Do I want to give it a go? Might I adapt it to fit more readily into my heart-held view of the world, of my world, of my core and centre and faiths?
In one particular instance, the answer was simply: YES.
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On solstice eve, I attended a writing workshop let by the ever gentle and inspirational Jonathan Ward on his local patch. Approaching the Solstice has become a traditional offering and this was the first one that I have managed to attend. Jonathan is very nature-focussed and works from the premise that if you want to write about nature (however / whatever you write) then necessarily you must spend time connecting with it, being out there amongst it, recognising your part in it.
He is a keen advocate of writing outside, in the field, taking notes, writing raw…and increasingly encouraging of the giving of those raw, unencumbered words back to the place in which they were scribbled, first thoughts, unexpected notes, ideas, shared right there and then…before we take them away and subject them to our writerly constraints.
The outside part of this particular day was a simple walk up a back road through the woods and back again, with some time spent on forest edge, and field edge, and pond edge. We took with us the idea that we should think about the approaching Winter Solstice.
That I got there at all was a blessing of kindness. An offer of a lift for part of the journey gave me the faith to book myself in, when life-stuff intervened for the lady concerned, others stepped in to make sure it was still workable for me. The truth is that I may have found a way in any event, but that makes me no less grateful for not having to contend with the logistics of doing so at the last minute.
Then there was the weather. The ice and frost that would have made the walk a little too hazardous had melted away. The rain that followed it was blown away shortly after daybreak. We were gifted clear skies and low light and long shadows. We were given mists and glistenings. We were given shining trees and still waters.
We walked as we have become accustomed to doing: drifting together, drifting apart. Taking ourselves out of the group when we need to put pen to the page. Coming back into it to share or to eavesdrop or to learn.
I had deliberately left my camera at home for this walk. I wanted this one to be a serious ‘approach’ to the solstice.
We spent some time talking about the meaning of this time of year, and trying to capture what it means for us as individuals, then we walked to see what this particular approach in this specific place had to say to us.
I have scribbles that need to be coaxed into life. I was thinking a lot about gates and doorways and portals. Thresholds. Moving from one space into another. There were gates that had once been locked closed but now stood open. An iron gate into the woods still had a locked padlock, but nothing for it to be fastened to. A drive, leading to a hidden cottage, had a wooden five-bar gate, opened so long ago that it now seemed to be sinking, needing a rest, into the bank. A broken branch had formed an arch, softened by ivy growth, that reminded me of chapel, especially given the bronze floor and slanting fall of light beyond it.
We stood awhile by the pond. Ten scribes stepping out of time into their own present moments. Some of spoken of such gatherings as having a zen feel. Quaker Meeting is the idea that comes to me. Communal communing with the beyond, in silence.
What always strikes me is how these quiet times end. We are not called back together. It is not even that someone speaks and all others follow. It seems always that there is an unspoken consensus of allotted time having past and the circle simply breaks. One or two may need longer to complete their thoughts and lay them on the altar of their pages, but the spell breaks like a bubble and the circle with it.
We came back together, to share our ponderings.
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I loved this day so much, that the idea of “approaching the solstice” – taking time to think about it the day before – feels like a practice worth embedding. Not necessarily the day before, that may have been an accident of this year’s calendar, but something for me to think about.
The other practice I was gifted through the workshop was the notion of Last Light / First Light. There is in one family a ‘new year’ tradition of walking in the last light of New Year’s Eve, and again in the first light of New Year’s Day. And Oh! I love that!
For me, in my celebration of the Winter Solstice as the actual turning of the year, it makes sense for that idea to be pulled forward the ten days, so that it is not the calendar year, but the astronomical one, that I mark by Last & First Light walks.
So I did. More on that in a day or two.
For now…I hope your Solstice was a peaceful one and I wish you much merriment, or quiet pleasure, or whatever it is you wish for yourself over the next few days whether you are celebrating or not, in company or alone. Know always that the world holds space for each of us, we simply need to be brave enough to find it.
