The holidays have come and as we continue to move through them, like many of the mountain of movies depicting the season suggests, many of us find ourselves facing them with some mixture of joy, happiness, loneliness, and, yes, even dread.
You see, the holidays come in like a two sided coin - one the one side is the excitement and joy, wonder and merriment that permeates the air and fills the every-wind with hopefulness, the idea that all that is good in us and others will take flight. The other side is worry and fear, sadness and dread. This side rumbles with the echoes that remind us that this year, like all the ones prior and since that fateful year, will never be enough. The reason that the holidays change from unencumbered happiness to a two-sided coin is different for everyone. Sometimes its a trigger, and sometimes it's a gradual shift in the landscape of holiday experiences.
What doesn't change are the permanent and dotted lines that connect us. Someone explained to me the other day that it was hard for her to see her husband so sad at the holidays, but not surprising since he had lost his mother and his father wasn't in the best of health. She said she had tried to explain to him that she was there and that they had lots of friends and her family to rely on, but I found myself full of empathy, suddenly explaining to her all the "others" were mere dotted line attachments to him and that the change in his permanent line attachments means that the holidays are never quite the same.
You see, you only have a few permanent lines in your life - your mother and father (or mothers or fathers, perhaps), your siblings, and your children. Spouses, relatives, friends...those are all dotted lines. They have their own permanent attachments, and permanent attachments cannot be replaced, and the expectation is that they come first. What causes the reality of the two sided coin is when the permanent lines in your life start disappearing, or the expectation of equal weight on both ends of the lines shift. Permanency doesn't equate priority or equality, and that also gives heaviness to the shadowed side of the coin.
All this to say that emotions are complex, and they fill the holidays like one fills a bucket. Some buckets are larger, some are smaller. Some flexible, some rigid. Some can expand, and some have holes. We shouldn't be surprised by the manifestation of both sides of our coins at these times of years, or how facing them and our permanent lines can fill or drain our bucket. Instead, we should appreciate them, treat them with grace, and remember to spend time with those connected to us with permanent lines because it's important to remind each other that we matter.
Dotted lines, too.
Wishing you the best of the rest of 2020.
