I have long insisted that the best time of year is the week between Christmas and New Year's. During this period nothing happens, and that's the way I like it. We do not entertain, we do not go out. The two exceptions to this are 1) that we will accept a dinner invitation from friends if one comes along and 2) that we will, if the mood strikes us, go out to our annual viewing of a first-run movie. I revel in this time at home, with nothing on the schedule. Some years we undertake a major cleaning project ("major" to me is anything that takes longer than half an hour). But all real work halts, our usual schedule is set aside, and reading is king.
It is heaven. At no point do I wish for it to end sooner so that I can get back to work. The downside of this extended vacation, however, is that I can sink so deeply into happy lethargy that I find it extremely difficult to come back to real life. I know I have to—after all, as they say, this is my one shot at life (well, some people say that; others say the opposite). I can't wallow my way through the next ten years—nor do I really, in my heart of hearts, want to. Well, in part of my heart of hearts. The left ventricle, maybe.
So I will attribute my lassitude to the deep freeze that has hit the east with endless ice and snow. It obviously has all to do with the weather and nothing to do with wanting to withdraw, abdicate, or shrug my shoulders of the burdens of life.
Oh, puh-leeze. The burdens of life? And you see these as what, exactly? Look more closely and you will see nary a burden in sight. Nothing in view but love, excitement, appreciation, and constant learning.
Oh ho! There's something new: learning. I spend more time than I like to admit whining about being unable to retain new information. I don't read non-fiction, for example, because I immediately forget whatever I learned in the book. So what's all this about "constant learning"?
Perhaps it isn't about linear, objective learning but about new insights and awareness. It's all, in point of fact, about me--my place in the Universe, my place in my own life. It's about correcting and modifying previously held beliefs. It's about memories that shift and change and morph into different ways of seeing what I had thought was all taken care of, all slotted into categories, boxed into cartons and settled once and for all.
Let others attempt to learn and retain fact-based information. I've got my eyes fixed firmly on my navel, because three fingers below it, at the dan-tien, is where the action is. Or so they say.
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