Open Heart Procedure

I am filled with love and light. I need only open my eyes to see the light and open my heart to feel the warmth of that love.

For some reason I’ve found at this time of year that I’m resistant to this idea. With the onslaught of the holiday kerfuffle, I was grumpy about what I anticipated but unwilling to adopt a different approach. I was resistant to acknowledgement that family holiday celebrations can be pleasant, abiding instead with a stubborn inner dialogue about what in those observances is less than magical. I was just feeling like and acting like a Poopy Head.

I wanted to cry and whine and pout about the lack of joy I felt for this time of year. I didn’t feel connected to it, and found instead that it amounted to an element of my personal “work plan.” And I couldn’t find a way to talk about it since a) it’s not up to my peeps to "fix" this issue, and b) the sharing of shitty feelings about the holidays is the relationship equivalent of kicking a puppy -- random and cruel.

In fact, I tried talking about my view of these celebrations, having been asked too many times to count whether I was looking forward to the holidays. When I felt especially safe and plucky, I started to respond - that I don’t feel like any of the holidays or holiday routines to which I adhere feel like traditions to which I "belong." This made a lot of people uncomfortable, as if my overcast view of holiday celebrations might somehow be contagious through casual contact. That in turn rendered me additionally disconnected, hurt and pissy.

Here's what I might have said instead: I have no sacrosanct traditions that reflect my tastes or sensibilities around the season. Nothing I have left of Christmas is related to my growing-up traditions. Nothing in my current basket of events supports that desire for connectedness to the season or to my tribe. I've tried to initiate a few things: the decorating of gingerbread houses; shopping for stocking stuffers; and pre-Christmas events that don’t impinge on existing holiday routines. Nothing takes. I wanted instead an event that connects me to the people I love, that will foster and nurture warm and lasting memories and that will years from now connect me again to long-ago warm fuzzies.

I thought the through-line was connectedness. I’m advised by big-brained, wide-open, fully “woke” internet sages that we are all part of a single human family. Some would even assert that all living beings -- be they human or otherwise -- are interconnected. These sages would have me consider that not only are we part of one web of life, but that when I’m feeling separate from my fellow life sojourners it’s because of some judgement I’ve made about myself or others.

Perhaps in my predisposition to judge (and I do) I decided that holidays suck because I looked around me and saw that some appear to be more happy and festive, so I felt out of sync with them. Perhaps I registered that some sojourners appear to be justifiably sad and more isolated, so I felt as though I had nothing to offer in my state of severe Bah-humbuggery. The great sages pronounced that my ill mood had to do with my judginess and that I would find relief from my own isolation and shitty attitude if I found compassion for the other sojourners sitting in the Bah Humbug section of the plane, and opened my heart to the influence of the folks who sit up front in the Inner Peace cabin (sometimes also occupied by this Mary Fucking Sunshine). It would appear that the power to turn around my experience of the holidays (indeed, my experience of any moment) lies with me. I fucking hate that.

I’m tired, I protested. I’m not up for any personal growth or enlightenment. I don’t have the bandwidth to offer compassion and abstain from judgement every fucking day, all fucking year. I manage about 75% capacity for light and love during the course of a year. I’m thinking that’s a pretty good average and I don’t feel a burning need to accomplish 100% enlightenment for all 12 months. Is it so much to ask for a holiday tradition that brings out in me and those I hold dear a cheerful moment, feeds my soul and bolsters me for a new year? Is it really so hard to find a tradition that preserves for future conjuring and subsequent comfort all the best in me and my tribe? I don’t want one more thing on my annual to-do list -- “Feel compassion for fellow sojourners; open heart to love and light.” -- I want comfort!

I hate it when the sages are right.

I suppose I don’t need to do any heavy lifting -- hauling my bad attitude out of its seat in the Bah Humbug section and dragging its ass up to the Inner Peace cabin. I don’t actually need a light and love-filled tradition to which I and my fellow, merry sojourners feel bound. I need instead to feel bound to my fellow sojourners and stand with and next to them wherever they reside in this holiday frenzy. I will in fact find my sojourners right next to me and we’ll share whatever little flicker of light emerges into view. I won’t be the only one hanging back on the periphery of the festivities. And I won’t be the only Poopy Head to glower and pout as I wait in the interminable line at the local Post Office. I can share love and light with the other Poopy Heads who struggle with me to find the season’s sparkle. I can offer compassion not just to the merry-makers of the world but to those who sit with me in the Bah Humbug section of the plane. And we will have fun, damnit.