Happy Winter's Solstice

This year, most years, in these darkest days of winter, I feel vulnerable.

I can't say I like the feeling. I prefer to pretend I'm in control of something more than the way I react to what happens in the world around me. I know it's not true, but I often pretend anyways. I pretend until the deepening cold of winter and the darkness of its days slice keenly through my pretenses, leaving me aware of my kinship to the babe in the manger; the one I was taught to adore as a child.

This year, I've felt tinier and more helpless than I have in many years. Climate change, and the pandemic still raging and mutating, feel so big. The toolbox of ways I have to help fix things feels, well, puny.

The drumbeat of doom is loud, unrelenting. Yet, yet. Beneath the roar, I can hear a tiny voice telling me to hope anyways. I ran across this tweet from Anne Lamott today; it fits my mindset:

Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait, watch and work: you don't give up. So we take care of the poor today. We pick up litter in our neighborhoods and trails. Left foot, right foot, breathe.

She's right. You don't give up. Sometimes, these times, I am tempted to. But when I let my mind take that path, all I can see is the darkness spreading unchecked. I really don't like that mental picture.

So, I mentally switch paths. The path of stubborn hope feels better than the other. At the end of the day, I sleep better the days I know I haven't given up. As I drift off, a small glow of hope created by the good I've been part of during the day coalesces into light. Sometimes the light is flickering of a candle, sometimes it's the steady glow of a nightlight ready to safely guide my steps should I wake in the night.

I do so prefer the light over the darkness, so today, I'm not going to give up.

This, too, shall pass.

Tomorrow night, I will light candles of Joy, Peace, Love, and yes, Hope. I will know I made it this far, and so far, all is well. I will thank the darkness for the lessons it brings (I wouldn't call getting in touch with my vulnerabilities a bad thing...), and know the dawn will come. 

Left foot, right foot, breathe.