Almost a month has passed by (funny how fast January always vanishes: like all newborns, the year is full of energy), and maybe there is enough distance already to recapitulate what were the latest Christmas like.
In my case, they were of a strange kind. I have always been very ritual about the end of the year; I used to surround those final days with all kind of little symbolic actions, purification house cleanings, scheduled journal re-reading, etc… But for some reason, it wasn’t the case this year; I lived the transit from 2009 to 2010 in a state that can only define as “attentive indifference”.
There was no apparent reason for that: yeah, we had to deal with a lot arrangements because of some relatives coming to stay with us, but I had been busy in Christmas before. Yeah, urban life is not the best context to celebrate the change of seasons, the course of life (which was the original meaning of Christmas, as I posted). Of course, people is not precisely friendly, the media’s and malls’ good will is not precisely convincing stuff, and everything around is artificial and more or less indifferent to mother nature…
…but I had gone through all of that before. Then what was that weird, contemplative numbness, that watching days go by “without further ado”, with the only emotion, if any, of a certain concern for my own lack of concern? Was it age? Was I getting fed up with the same old circus, which felt faster and heavier every year?
By no means I’m saying that I’m immune to age or to the aggressions of modern cities; but the cause this time seemed to be different, and it wasn’t until a few days after Christmas that I understood it, or, rather, felt it: round January the 8th, sudden as an avalanche, all the common symptoms arrived. The usual list: illusion, motivation, a desire to try new things plus a different understanding of the old ones, as if everything were brand new, and also, a wish that all beings could reach completion, become the best version of themselves… good old-fashioned Christmas sentimentalism, in a word. As to a cause, I want to venture here my hypothesis.
Exactly the day after Christmas’ official end, a really heavy snowfall stormed Madrid. I think Mother Nature is sometimes ironic, and this particular event says a lot about the human kind and its “excellent” harmony with its environment.
One of the most evident tragedies of climate change is that we ourselves, our physical bodies, are genetically programmed to be ruled by the four seasons. Four seasons that we have distorted and ruined. So you don’t have to travel to the pole to perceive the lack of adjustment; just watch yourself attentively, watch that 70% of water you are made of, watch that weird corporal uneasiness you feel certain days for no reason.
The left brain is in charge of calendars. It also receives all the blah blah from other left brains. It does all the hard thinking, fixes appointments and festivities, it likes numbers and closed patterns. It was told it was Christmas time, so it rationally believed it; rationally, and nothing but rationally. Cold turkey.
On the other hand, the right brain is attentive to what the skin and the organs say, what we feel in our bones, literally. In fact, saying “it is attentive” is wrong, because its virtues are dispersion, impressionist view, open field, whole picture. I doesn’t deal with concepts (like past, present or future), only with sensations. And the sensation that came from January the 8th was familiar. Period.
So I enjoyed it -fun, delicate, delightful- while it lasted. As usual. But, at the same time, it is impossible not to regret the divergence of directions in two parts of something that should work as a unity.
Human being is a social animal, it cannot survive without its community. But at the same time, that community happens to impose on its individuals all kind of divisions, deformations and torsions like this. It is sad to acknowledge, but I’m afraid there is a constant, universal war going on, and the battlefield is ourselves. Each and everyone of us.
What do you think?
Related posts:
The roots of Christmas
The cliff metaphor
The magic of journaling
Life right after removing the wrapper
Playing death