This idea about what soul fitness means makes perfect and total sense to me.
Christmas is complicated. It’s fun but it comes with expectations. We look forward to it and build it up but then it’s over quickly. We get to see family but we have to see family. Sometimes that’s a drag or at least a lot of driving. And what the capitalist consumer driven society we inhabit has turned Christmas into is sad and ugly.
Speaking of the sad, ugly consumer driven society we exist in, if you work retail you see the level of waste. For every holiday, tons of crap is delivered to every store. But more and more I see a lot left on the shelves after the holiday. At first I wondered if people had finally gotten sick of this constant cycle of consuming but then it occurred to me that there’s just so many stores and other outlets to get this crap now and that’s why there’s so much left over everywhere. A lot of that leftover crap just gets thrown out. Yes, the crap that doesn’t sell gets thrown away. What an abominable waste of our resources. We live in a country where many people don’t have enough to eat and don’t have affordable healthcare but we are allocating our resources to produce a bunch of crap that no one wants and then it gets thrown out when it sits on the store shelves too long.
I’m sure I sound like a grumpy old man but shit’s just not the same as it was. Certainly, some things change for the better over time but you know that’s not what I was talking about. The general vibe now is resignation. It didn’t used to be like that. Yes, our country and culture has always been fucked up. But, in my experience, when dealing with a business, there used to be more accountability. People used to actually try to solve a customer’s problem but now the customer is really at the mercy of a company that’s so big that there’s rarely anyone to deal with who has any power to provide real help. Even if they know the policies of the company are stupid, they can’t do anything. We opened a box on Christmas that had been purchased about a month before. It was an electronic item and the box did not have the power cord in it. The representative for the company stated that they could do nothing because of the age of the product. It is common to buy a Christmas present ahead of time. This is not a surprising situation. I know that this is where we are now but I was still surprised that this company wouldn’t do anything at all. What’s the big deal? Do they really think that we’d call them just to get an extra power cord for free? They cost $6. The guy on the phone said he understood how we were feeling and he sounded like he meant it but that’s it. That’s all that was going to happen. He couldn’t do shit and his supervisor couldn’t do shit and the people who could do anything don’t fucking care about you, me, or their employees. They care about buying another yacht. Resignation. The employees know that the company they work for sucks and doesn’t care about them or their customers. We, as customers, know that the company we are purchasing from sucks and doesn’t care about us or their employees. The company was Dell, by the way. The vendor, Best Buy, was equally awful.
We live in a modern day feudal system. See above.
December/January is a great time of year for sunrises. The Sun is rising so late that it’s easy to catch a sunrise. Watching a sunrise is an awe-inspiring experience. It is a direct line to Reality. Not the make believe nonsense we are surrounded with and our mind is cluttered with regularly, but the real Reality.
Gratitude. It does a body good.
Resistance is futile. It just causes us pain. I’m going into 2024 focusing on accepting what’s in front of me.
We all have to deal with people that we don’t particularly enjoy, right? The other side of the coin is that they might not enjoy dealing with us either. I know that there are people out there who don’t like dealing with me and they think I’m a jerk. Please, my three loyal readers, stay calm. It’s true. There are people in the world who dislike me. It’s ok. Just like it’s ok that there are people that I don’t really enjoy dealing with. Why do we get so hung up on stuff like that? It really doesn’t matter at all. We’re all just doing our own thing. We gotta deal with each other when we gotta and then we just go back to our lives. It’s ok that we aren’t all in love with each other.
I am feeling the nostalgia of youth and of my children’s younger days. I am nostalgic for them sitting on my lap when we watch a movie. That will never happen again. I am keenly aware that the window of time is closing with my kids. I have always been aware of these types of windows in time. Being raised by my grandparents, instead of my parents, did it. They were a generation older. Kids can see their parents as immortal but when your grandparents are raising you, even when they’re healthy and strong, there is no illusion about their age and where they are in their journey. We can complain about time passing and these windows closing but that isn’t helpful. It’s better to just keep an awareness of these passing stages and live each one fully.
All of a sudden there’s just less time with your kids. It is the flip of a switch not a slow transition. They are in school and you work. If they do any other activities, those activities take place in the afternoons and evenings after school (and weekends). That’s time when you could be hanging out with them. By the time the activities are over, it’s time to wrap up the day and get ready for the next day. We go from hanging out and playing with our kids to mostly just seeing them as we drive them to their own activities.
We move on from Christmas so quickly. For some people it’s back to work and the regularness of our routines the very next day. There’s room for so much emotion around Christmas and the end of one year and the beginning of another. Where we live, the darkness and the weather play a role in it too. Lots of darkness and downtime. Christmas is a different kind of holiday. It comes at us with more depth. We have feelings about it that stick with us from our childhoods but there’s the reality of how it’s not the same as an adult. There’s nostalgia. And even if you aren’t a New Year’s Resolution person, the end of one year and beginning of another is a normal time to reassess, reevaluate, and regroup. There’s a lot going on this time of year and it feels like when we return to the normal routine too quickly we miss the opportunity for reflection.
Staring at phones is just a different version of an old thing. Being able to take our phones with us all the time is what compounds it but we’ve been staring at screens for decades. How many times did you come home from school as a kid and just sit your ass in front of the TV and watch cartoons? How about Saturday mornings? We were being lazy and isolated and antisocial back then. It’s just worse and weirder with phones. Not just because of their portability but because it’s not just a TV show. It’s movies, music, games, internet. We all do it. I don’t watch a lot of TV but I do love sports. But how many games do we need to watch? How humans spend their downtime is weird. What were people doing before TV? Did we play more games together? Did we hang out with each other more? I don’t think staring at a screen counts as living. It’s sitting on the sideline.
No one can grieve for you. I know a few people dealing with loss right now. They’re on different timelines and probably in different stages of the process. I’ve expressed my condolences. I still think about them and what they’re going through. But I don’t reach out to them every time that I think of them. You need room to grieve. You need time to deal with the business of someone dying. If we reached out every time we think of someone, in that situation, it would be too much. I know it feels good to be supported but you don’t always want to be thinking about it. If we’re constantly reaching out then we become a distraction and maybe even an annoyance. There’s gotta be some sweet spot where we check in from time to time to make sure everything is ok while still giving enough space for them to be able to move through the process. Often, I handle my own emotions and losses better than other people’s losses. When I’m the one dealing with it, I have to be able to still function and take care of my business. But when it’s someone else, I can feel pretty bad for them. We know what it feels like to experience a loss and it sucks for someone we care about to suffer. Then I end up feeling stupid for being so upset about something that doesn’t even really affect me. Whatever we do or don’t do, no one can grieve for you. That’s your journey to take.
I really love your blog. So often your thoughts resonate with me (I don’t know if I should be scared!).
Christmas has long been so bittersweet for me. For decades now there hasn’t been any real tradition to anchor the holiday. So much has depended on others’ situatioins, mainly my sister since she’s the one who had the kids. But she’s also had 3 different relationships, so our celebrations have not always been with the same people even though the different people were all expected (by my sister) to be fully accepted as family.
I could go on ad nauseum re: the greed and consumerism around Christmas. It is also SO crazy in this country that most people only get a meager day or two off. Many people don’t even get Christmas Eve off. So this huge build up with no time off to really enjoy it, leaving so many people frustrated and exhausted at the end of it. The past few years my mom has been too tired to travel here to CO for Christmas so I’ve gone to NY to spend it with her while my sister stays here and celebrates with her family du jour. I have been pleasantly surprised at how enjoyable it is to spend a quiet Christmas with my mother. We exchange some fun and very simple gifts, sometimes visit friends or relatives, drive around to see the lights, etc. I even like going to church with her as it brings at least a little meaning to the day.
I love what you wrote about screens, phones, etc. I don’t watch a whole lot of TV. When I tell people that, they often ask me what I do instead. Here’s my list: talk with a friend on the phone, do a crossword puzzle, sit with one or both of my cats on my lap and listen to some music, do adult coloring books, read or listen to an audio book. I like to cook and if I’m home on a Sat night I’ll look for a complicated recipe to try out. I am endlessly fascinated by so many things so sometimes I just google stuff I’ve heard that I want to know more about. Oh yeah, and maybe respond to a friend’s blog!
The grief journey has been a wild ride for me. When Mark was sick and I would imagine what it would be like without him, I found out the reality was nothing like anything I had thought it would be. Much harder and much more different. Very hard to put into words. A world of its own. But it also changes and morphs. I am fortunate to have found an awesome online support group of women who have lost their husbands or partners to pancreatic cancer. That has probably helped me more than anything. The fact is that our Western society has absolutely no clue as to how to deal with grief which is really sad.
For the first time since Mark died, I am looking forward to the year ahead. I know that retirement will be challenging and a huge transition but I am starting to feel like I’m in a rut. There are new worlds and experiences to explore and while I’ll be sad to leave my coworkers and the career I have loved, I will also be so glad to be free of the corporate stranglehold. I am hopeful for what life may still have in store.
I always appreciate you sharing your thoughts so thought I’d share some of mine with you.
Thank you for such a complete reply. Writing is something I do really for myself but I try to make it applicable or at least entertaining for others. So, it is more enjoyable when it becomes a conversation. And you also go to the beach on your Christmas trips!