How truly magical is that time in-between Christmas and New Years. I have never noticed it as intensely before but it is a guiding star we need to follow.
Time somehow stands still. We know the year and the month and the season, but the days seem to blur and spill into one another without notice. There is no Monday or Tuesday. Lunch time, or evening time. There is no weekends and no thank God for the weekend. It is one short, or if you’re lucky, a long collection of the time in between.
Thats where the magic is, that’s where happiness lives, and that is what we need to find once we get back to the business of doing what we need to do. We’re in a perpetual war of push and pull between doing what we have to and being who we want to. They are two kingdom’s at war with each other. Respectful of each other, but vying for more time and territory.
Doing is easy. People notice if we don’t do. There are checks and balances for not doing something. People will reach out to you. People will scold and reward you. There is no check and balances for being.
We can go for long periods of time without being in touch with who we are. Really long periods of time. Yet our being, spiritual reality is what hold everything in our lives together. It doesn’t complain but it is noticeable when it has been suffocating for a long time.
That time in between Christmas and New Years should not be a once a year reality. It should be a benchmark by which we measure the rest of our lives. If our jobs don’t allow us that kind of time. If our lives have become so complicated that they don’t all that sort of time, than it is time to make some changes.
I would make this a priority. A priority to slow down and be who you are meant to be. It is easier said than done and pretty soon we’ll be back, panting and sweating on our treadmill of responsibilities, but perhaps we can make it a regular habit to reflect on our lives. Socrates said that an unreflected life is not worth living, but reflection requires us to make time and effort because it is not compatible with a to do list.
That time in between is truly magical. I thank God for the Christmas Season even though each and every year I dread the idea of it. The long drawn out period of consumerism. The depression that many people face and the many members of people families that many have to pretend they like and embrace.
But it’s a magical time if for nothing more than that loss of time and that time in between.
We were born human beings and yet we have taken on the burden of becoming human doings. But perhaps there is hope. Perhaps we can create our own little pockets of in between. Perhaps we don’t have to wait another twelve months. I think we can be human all year long. It’s not a resolution. It’s a reality that begs to be embraced at any time.
Cover photo generously provided by photographer Kalie Kortelainen https://unsplash.com/@kallek
