Raw Reflection
Hovering craze and the delusion of summer.
It’s been a while and I’m afraid I still don’t have much for you. The holidays produce a craze that only the strongest survive—a vortex where you must find your own way out. Society demands we pause our lives to celebrate as if they don’t stop outside of the vortex. It’s like becoming an adult and realizing summers are just summers. Life doesn’t stop—there is still work, there is still family, there is still hovering craze—just of a different flavor.
That’s not to say the holidays aren’t enjoyable. They have their moments. But at times I find myself more out of my element than not—fitting in with a Christian holiday adapted by society and exploited by consumerism. It’s January 8thand they still leave this sort of “fuzz.” I suppose for some people, life didn’t stop. It required them to work through the craze of Christmas and Covid. Fighting external buzz as they dodge the everywhere virus, unable to quarantine in their respective homes because they must stay alive and working for the people. Did they ever enjoy summers of freedom? Frolicking on the beach because school was out and your only worry was when it started again. Who allowed the upper half of society to enjoy such freedom? Who allowed this lie to be told of childhood freedom when every child isn’t allowed to be free? Setting the stage for a life full of choices that only money and privilege can provide.
I suppose as I process the past two weeks this is what comes out of me. A reflection I didn’t intend to have but one that’s surfacing nonetheless. Perhaps my interpretation doesn’t match yours. Perhaps the reality of an American Christmas doesn’t suit your situation. Reflecting on privilege and purpose produces gratitude as well as guilt. There can be remedial advantage without diving in too deep—you don’t have to hurt yourself; you can just notice.
Maybe this is all coming out sideways—a projection of another life; another track in my emotional mind that leads to somewhere other than Christmas.
I think of the dogs burying themselves deep in the snow to stay warm—their primal brain begging not to freeze to death. Now transfer that ache in your heart and that swarm of your belly to the human you see on the street—to the apartment dweller who must work three jobs to provide a society-approved Christmas for her children—to the person who knows less than you but tries anyway. To our neighbors, left and right. To those whose craze lasts long after the holidays, enveloped by a different flavor. To the people who never realized the freedom of summer and to their generations of children who never will.
Reflection has a purpose designed to make you better and maybe, just maybe, set you free.
May 2022 be a year of preserving reflection.
Alicia Lee Colasurdo 2022