As I gather texts and emails and even snail mail from friends and family, as I share my bounty with underpaid people who make my life easier, I feel an old familiar tug at my heart. My neighbor who is nearly debilitated delivers plates of cupcakes and cookies and even a pie to my house and I know the acts that made the holidays great still survive. Some traditions are more inclusive than others. Today, loving isn’t limited to family ties. The caring that once cemented neighborhoods remains– even where there is no neighborhood as such. We’ve begun to recognize ourselves in people who seem different from us. I remember that I’m part of a larger reality populated with life in its many forms. I pause for a moment to wonder what my contribution to our world would look like if I had to display it in colors or music. What colors would I choose? What shapes would I draw? Would my music sound like traffic? Or wind among leaves or over hillsides? Or birds or beasts calling the family together? Would I feel proud or lonely or, perhaps, disappointed?
Holidays should produce a twang, a tug of recognition and appreciation. They shouldn’t be obligations but revelations of connections that exist out of sight all year long. Today I discover my world is far more beautiful than I realized. I’ve allowed the emotional poverty, the abject cruelty of the few to scribble over my colors recently, but my colors remain intact out of sight, thanks to people who never forgot to love. I’m grateful to have kindness survivors in my life. I do my best to express my honest empathetic feelings in writing and text. I take note of the many acts of compassion and defiance around me and I remember no one can command the world I hold inside myself but me. It’s a lovely world that floats far beyond my space into the hearts of others. I’m going to find ways to expand that world in the days to come.
